Adolescent alcohol and drug screening instruments: a critical review

Adolescent Substance Use Screening Instruments: 10-Year Critical Review of the Research Literature

Over ten million teenagers in the United States admit in a national survey that they drink alcohol, although it is illegal under the age of 21 in all states. In some studies, nearly one-quarter of school-age children both smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol. Over four thousand adolescents every day try marijuana for the first time. The dangers of use, abuse and dependency on each of these substances have been established. When we also consider that these three substances are considered gateway drugs, that is, drugs whose use is likely to lead to experimentation with "hard" drugs, the potential problem of such widespread use is even more severe. Additionally, use of these substances is known to co-occur with a number of other psychiatric conditions as well as health issues such as the incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and fetal alcohol syndrome babies.

Given the magnitude of the issue, it is essential that clinics, schools, juvenile detention centers and medical clinics have screening instruments at hand that quickly and accurately evaluate potential or present abuse or dependency conditions in the populations they serve. This paper is intended to serve as a listing of the most up-to-date instruments available, a brief description of the applicability of each, and a review of the critical literature that evaluates their respective reliability and validity.