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a hypothetical situation rather than an actual experience of dependence being reinstated.” (p. 173)
The changed instruction in the SADQ-C was the request to focus on the past three months, rather than on a recent heavy drinking episode as in the original version of the SADQ and the authors suggest on this basis that the SADQ-C may be better suited for use as a treatment outcome measure. Additionally they refer to the possible ability of the scale, with and without the Impaired Control Questionnaire, to predict controlled drinking outcomes in the way that other researchers (for example Heather et al. 1998) have been able to do with the measurement of impaired control alone.
3.4.2 The Alcohol Dependence Scale (ADS)
Described by the authors (Skinner and Allen 1982) as a brief, 29 item self-completion scale that measures the Alcohol Dependence Syndrome, this scale was derived from factor analysis of the Alcohol Use Inventory (Horn et al. 1974) which predated description of the alcohol dependence syndrome. It was validated in a sample of 225 individuals seeking treatment for alcohol problems at a large clinical institution in Canada for very specific purposes namely:
“(a) to examine item characteristics, reliability, and influence of response styles on the Alcohol Dependence Scale; (b) to determine concurrent validity with respect to drinking patterns and consequences of alcohol abuse; (c) to evaluate predictive validity for client show at treatment; and (d) to explore relationships between alcohol dependence and physical symptoms, demographic variables, intellectual functioning and psychopathology.”
(Skinner and Allen 1982 p. 200)
As a result of the validation study, the number of items was reduced to 25 covering quantity consumed, hangovers, effects of intoxication, withdrawal symptoms, preoccupation of thoughts with drinking, probable impaired control items which refer to continuous drinking, attempts to cut down and reinstatement after abstinence. Response choices are either dichotomous items, three or four forced choice items (Skinner and Horn 1984). Although validation was carried out with the 29
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