Problem Statement: Among individuals aged 12 years or older, 14.3% (40.0 million) reporting the use of an illicit drug in the previous year. Given the prevalence of drug abuse, it is increasingly important to determine effective screening practices, treatment procedures, and best practices among various subpopulations to identify drug use-related…

This study examined the clinical utility of the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument--Second Version (MAYSI-2) among African American (AA) incarcerated youth and used White incarcerated youth as a comparison group. Data were analyzed for 314 incarcerated youth (193 AA offenders and 121 White offenders) of ages 13-17 years who were adjudicated…

"LifeSkills Training" (LST) is a popular drug prevention program shown to be effective at preventing youth substance use. The Middle School Health Survey (MSHS) is a questionnaire that was created by the developers of the LST curriculum to measure changes in knowledge and attitudes about drugs and life skills among youth. Despite the…

Objective: To examine the psychometric properties of a measure of cannabis-specific Protective Behavioral Strategies (PBS), which assesses ways in which students may reduce cannabis-related risk. Participants: Respondents to the American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment II (N = 580) during Spring 2015. Methods:…

This study evaluated a process for training raters to reliably rate clinicians delivering the Adolescent Community Reinforcement Approach (A-CRA) in a national dissemination project. The unique A-CRA coding system uses specific behavioral anchors throughout its 73 procedure components. Five randomly selected raters each rated "passing"…

The widespread adoption of research-supported treatments by mental health providers has facilitated empirical development of quality assurance (QA) methods. Research in this area has focused on QA systems aimed at assuring the integrity of research-supported treatment implementation, while examination of QA systems to assure appropriate…

Objective: To develop and implement an intervention for problem alcohol and substance use among student athletes at a large Midwestern department of intercollegiate athletics in the USA, by use of screening, a brief intervention, referral to treatment (SBIRT) and motivational interviewing (MI). This paper outlines the development of the protocol,…

Background: The purpose of this study was to develop and test the reliability of self-report survey items designed to monitor the nonmedical use of prescription drugs among adolescents. Methods: Eighteen nonmedical prescription drug items designed to be congruent with the substance abuse items in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's…

Objective: This comparative study evaluated the readability and test-retest reliability of a questionnaire designed to assess the attitudes, beliefs behaviours and sources of information about HIV/AIDS among young adults recruited from universities in the United States of America (USA), Turkey and South Africa. Design/Setting: The instrument was…

Objectives: Establish metric properties of the Neighborhood Inventory for Environmental Typology (NIfETy). Method: A total of 919 residential block faces were assessed by paired raters using the NIfETy. Reliability was evaluated via interrater and internal consistency reliability; validity by comparing NIfETy data with youth self-reported…

This paper is based on a study of 7,372 students in grades 5-10 (aged 11-16) in a representative sample of Norwegian compulsory schools. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between students' reported socio-economic status (SES) and their perceived social inclusion (SI) in school in the whole sample. We also considered separately a…

This study assesses the psychometric properties of the Condom Barriers Scale (CBS), an instrument originally designed to measure women's perceptions and attitudes regarding male condom use, with a sample of men at high risk for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Participants include 590 male patients in drug abuse treatment involved in a…

Although gender issues have been addressed in clinical drug abuse literature, very little research has focused on gender differences in terms of the psychometric properties of assessment instruments. If boys and girls interpret instruments differently, the accuracy of clinical evaluation, referral, and treatment decisions based on these measures…

Studied the reliability of the Addiction Severity Index (1980) by using eight trained professional actors as client surrogates to examine the reliability of the instrument when administered in the field. With careful surrogate selection and training, the method proves to be an effective means of assessment. (SLD)

Developed Adolescent Drug Involvement Scale (ADIS) to measure level of drug involvement, considered as continuum ranging from no use to severe dependency, in adolescents. Administered ADIS to 453 adolescents referred for treatment. Results indicated acceptable internal consistency and provide preliminary evidence of validity. Scores correlated…