Validation of problem drinking screening instruments for DWI offenders

Lacey, John H.; Jones, R. K. (Ralph K.); Wiliszowski, Connie H. · 1999 · ROSA P / United States. Department of Transportation. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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Summary

This study addresses the need for validated screening instruments to identify problem drinking among Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) offenders. Courts increasingly use brief screening tools to determine if offenders require further assessment or treatment, yet most widely used instruments lacked independent validation against an objective criterion. To resolve this, the researchers developed a standardized "gold standard" criterion measure and validated six screening instruments against it. The methodology involved convening an expert panel of leaders in problem drinking assessment to develop the criterion measure, the Comprehensive Adult Interview. This instrument assessed four domains: alcohol consumption, alcohol dependence, consequences of drinking, and vulnerability. The panel also defined a problem drinker as someone consuming five or more drinks daily on eight or more days per month, experiencing five or more adverse consequences, or exhibiting three or more symptoms of dependence. Six screening instruments were selected for validation: the Michigan Alcohol Screening Test (MAST), the Mortimer-Filkins Questionnaire, the Driver Risk Inventory (DRI), the Substance Abuse/Life Circumstance Evaluation (SALCE), and a combination of consumption questions from the Alcohol Clinical Index and the CAGE questions. Data were collected from 609 consenting adult DWI program participants in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Instruments were administered by personnel without direct responsibility for the subjects, with administration order counterbalanced to prevent bias. The results indicated that the screening instruments correctly identified problem drinkers, as classified by the criterion instrument, between 72% and 92% of the time. The study found a trade-off between sensitivity and specificity: instruments that were more sensitive in identifying problem drinkers tended to be less specific, resulting in a higher rate of false positives where non-problem drinkers were incorrectly classified as having a problem. The analysis compared each instrument’s classification against the criterion measure, detailing degrees of agreement, false positives, and false negatives. The significance of this research lies in providing empirical validation for screening tools used in the criminal justice system. By establishing a replicable criterion measure and demonstrating the performance characteristics of common screening instruments, the study offers courts and administrators data to select appropriate tools for preliminary screening. The findings highlight that while these instruments are effective, users must account for the inherent trade-off between capturing all problem drinkers and minimizing incorrect classifications of non-problem drinkers.

Key finding

Screening instruments correctly identified problem drinkers across a range of 72% to 92% of the time, with higher sensitivity correlating with lower specificity.

Methodology

field_study

Sample size: 609

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

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• dbq psychometrics

Information type

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• Methodological Resource: validation psychometrics