BACKGROUND: Very brief single-item screening questions (SISQs) for alcohol and other drug use can facilitate screening in health care settings, but are not widely used. Self-administered versions of the SISQs could ease barriers to their implementation.
OBJECTIVE: We sought to validate SISQs for self-administration in primary care patients.
DESIGN: Participants completed SISQs for alcohol and drugs (illicit and prescription misuse) on touchscreen tablet computers. Self-reported reference standard measures of unhealthy use, and more specifically of risky consumption, problem use, and substance use disorders, were then administered by an interviewer, and saliva drug tests were collected.
PARTICIPANTS: Adult patients aged 21-65 years were consecutively enrolled from two urban safety-net primary care clinics.
MAIN MEASURES: The SISQs were compared against reference standards to determine sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for alcohol and drug use.
KEY RESULTS: Among the 459 participants, 22 % reported unhealthy alcohol use and 25 % reported drug use in the past year. The SISQ-alcohol had sensitivity of 73.3 % (95 % CI 65.3-80.3) and specificity of 84.7 % (95 % CI 80.2-88.5), AUC = 0.79 (95 % CI 0.75-0.83), for detecting unhealthy alcohol use, and sensitivity of 86.7 % (95 % CI 75.4-94.1) and specificity of 74.2 % (95 % CI 69.6-78.4), AUC = 0.80 (95 % CI 0.76-0.85), for alcohol use disorder. The SISQ-drug had sensitivity of 71.3 % (95 % CI 62.4-79.1) and specificity of 94.3 % (95 % CI 91.3-96.6), AUC = 0.83 (95 % CI 0.79-0.87), for detecting unhealthy drug use, and sensitivity of 85.1 (95 % CI 75.0-92.3) and specificity of 88.6 % (95 % CI 85.0-91.6), AUC = 0.87 (95 % CI 0.83-0.91), for drug use disorder.
CONCLUSIONS: The self-administered SISQs are a valid approach to detecting unhealthy alcohol and other drug use in primary care patients. Although self-administered SISQs may be less accurate than the previously validated interviewer-administered versions, they are potentially easier to implement and more likely to retain their fidelity in real-world practice settings.
Validation of self-administered single-item screening questions (SISQs) for unhealthy alcohol and drug use in primary care patients
Journal of General Internal Medicine, 30 (12), 1757-1764. doi: 10.1007/s11606-015-3391-6. PMCID: PMC4636560.