The instrument consists of 5 questions about injuries after the person's 18th birthday.
Questions:
(1) fracture or joint dislocations
(2) injury in a traffic accident
(3) head injury
(4) injury in a fight or assault
(5) injured after drinking
total number of positive responses =
= SUM(points for the 5 questions)
Interpretation:
• minimum score: 0
• maximum score: 5
• A score >= 2 was associated with excessive drinking or alcohol abuse.
Limitations:
• The evaluation of the questionnaire involved 68 alcohol abusers and 68 social drinkers. The questions are sensitive but do not appear to be terribly specific, except for the last one, especially since social drinkers and nondrinkers are more prevalent in society. I would think adding "after you had been drinking" to the first 4 questions might reduce false positives.
• An alternative approach would be to add a threshold number to exceed. A person who abuses alcohol would be likely to have been in multiple fights, etc.
• I think that the questions might be directed more towards male drinkers than females.
|
Question
|
Alcohol Abusing
|
Social Drinking
|
|
fracture or dislocation
|
88%
|
41%
|
|
traffic accident
|
59%
|
26%
|
|
head injury
|
85%
|
24%
|
|
assault or fight
|
69%
|
9%
|
|
injured after drinking
|
88%
|
4%
|
