The adolescent drug involvement scale

Abstract

The Adolescent Drug Involvement Scale (ADIS) was developed as a research and evaluation tool to measure level of drug involvement in adolescents. The scale is an adaptation of Mayer and Filstead's Adolescent Alcohol Involvement Scale. For purposes of interpretation, drug involvement is considered as a continuum ranging from no use to severe dependence. The ADIS was administered to 453 adolescents upon referral to three programs: a brief intervention/diversion program, a rural outpatient program stressing one‐to‐one counseling, and an urban outpatient program taking a family systems approach to treatment.

Results indicate acceptable internal consistency (alpha = .85) and provide preliminary evidence of validity. ADIS scores correlated highly (e.g., r = .72) with self‐reported levels of drug use, with subjects' perceptions of the severity of their own drug use problem (r = .79), and with clinical assessments (r = .75). The scale thus shows promise as a research and brief screening instrument, going beyond measuring only use patterns in order to assess severity of drug involvement. Limitations include the scale's construction as a unidimensional operational measure not tied to a specific set of assessment criteria, the demographic characteristics of the validation sample (white midwestern youth from small cities and rural areas), and the lack of data regarding youth drawn at random rather than from intervention/treatment populations.