Brief alcoholism screening questionnaire: Establishment and validity in Taiwanese

Background and Purpose: There has been a marked increase in the prevalence of alcoholism in the Taiwanese population over the past 6 decades. This study was designed to establish a Taiwanese Brief Alcholism Screening Questionnaire (BASQ) for use in early detection in medical and public health settings. Methods: Interview data were collected from the database of the Taiwan Psychiatric Epidemiological Project (TPEP). The TPEP interviews had been conducted using the Chinese-modified version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS-CM) that included a section on alcoholism diagnosis. Data collected from a community sample of 13,373 subjects was used in this study. Twenty nine DIS-CM items for alcoholism diagnosis were entered into an analytic model with 7 statistical filters to identify cross-cultural items. A brief alcoholism screening questionnaire was constructed using these selected items. The validity of the questionnaire was tested in subjects (n = 457) recruited from a local medical center, a hospital clinic, and an alcoholism clinic of a psychiatric center. Results: Four cross-cultural items were identified and the BASQ was constructed. This BASQ had a best cut-off point of 3 with adequate sensitivity (0.86 to 0.88), specificity (0.88 to 0.89), and positive prediction rate (0.90 to 0.91). It detected a varying prevalence of alcoholism (10.1 to 90.3%) in diverse clinical settings. Conclusions: A 4-item BASQ was established with adequate validity for clinical and public health application in the early detection of alcoholism in Taiwanese subjects.