A new item bank for screening and assessing alcohol use and problems in adolescents

Activity: Talk or presentation typesOral presentation

Description

Aims: This programme of work was stimulated by a gap in knowledge identified in research, policy and practice literature and aimed to develop an item bank to screen for and assess the continuum of alcohol risk and harm in adolescents.

Methods/Results: The study comprised four stages: 1) a rigorous systematic review and meta-analysis which both identified the best performing existing measures for screening and assessing alcohol use and problems in young people and provided diagnostic and psychometric benchmarks on how well new instruments should perform; 2) semi-structured interviews with 44 adolescents in range of settings to develop and refine item content; 3) 381 young people completed the 65 items produced from stages 1 and 2: exploratory analysis indicates that an item based on heavy episodic drinking is most predictive of full AUDIT score >8 for screening and the new assessment items have an alpha of .92 (adjusted for 10 items), outperforming existing instruments 4) 827 young people have gone through via pen and paper or online administration the 33 items brought forward from stage 3.

Conclusions: Confirmatory categorical structural equation modelling results will be discussed with recommendations made for the best performing items to screen for and assess alcohol consumption and problems in adolescents. To conclude, suggestions for further validation work on the item bank and applicability to different practice settings will be made.
Period3 Sept 20197 Sept 2019
Event title33rd Annual Conference of the European Health Psychology Society
Event typeConference
LocationDubrovnik, CroatiaShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational