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SUMMARY Emerging evidence indicates that psychological dysregulation is an integral component of the liability for substance use disorder (SUD). To date, the measurement of dysregulation entails using a variety of disparate unstandardized instruments. This report discusses the rationale underlying the Dysregulation Inventory (DI), the methods employed in item selection and scale construction, and describes preliminary results regarding psychometric properties. Satisfactory to superior reliability and validity were observed for the self-report, teacher-report, and parent-report versions of the DI. The scores on the DI discriminate youth who are at high and low average risk for SUD ascertained on the basis of paternal SUD. Moreover, the score on the DI at age 10–12 was found to account for a significant proportion of the variance on substance use at age 12–14, thereby pointing to its predictive validity. In addition, the DI score covaried with SUD severity in a sample of female adolescents. These results indicate that the DI may be useful for detecting youth who are at high risk for SUD. KEYWORDS: Substance use disorderhigh risk youthpsychological dysregulationrisk factors
Mezzich et al. (Fri,) studied this question.