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Objective To develop a brief alcohol and other drug (AOD) screening test for adolescents. Methods A 9-item test was constructed by combining and modifying items from several AOD assessments, and administered concurrently with the Personal Involvement With Chemicals Scale (PICS), the criterion standard. Setting A hospital-based adolescent clinic. Subjects Fourteen- to 18-year-old patients consecutively arriving for routine medical care who were known to have used AOD. Measures Internal consistency of the 9 items was calculated using the Cronbach α. The relationship between the brief screen and PICS raw score was determined by stepwise linear regression analysis. The PICS T score has been shown to correctly classify substance abuse treatment need as no treatment (TResults Ninety-nine adolescents were tested (70.7% female, 36.4% black, 32.3% white, 19.2% Hispanic, mean age, 16.3 years). The 9 items had good internal consistency (Cronbach α=.79). Stepwise linear regression analysis identified 6 items whose total combined score was highly correlated with PICS (Pearsonr=0.84,PConclusions Further research must confirm the test's psychometric properties in a general clinic population. However, CRAFFT seems promising as a brief AOD screening test.
Knight et al. (Tue,) studied this question.