Concurrent validity of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) in relation to Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) severity levels according to the brief DSM-5 AUD diagnostic assessment screener

Figures & data

Figure 1. ROC curves for the three DSM-5 severity levels defined by the 13-item DSM-5 AUD diagnostic assessment screener: mild (broken line), moderate (solid) and severe (dotted).

Table 1. Mean and standard deviation of AUDIT scores for each DSM-5 severity level^a.

	N	Mean	Standard deviation
No AUD	620	2.99	2.64
Mild AUD	21	9.05	3.83
Moderate AUD	15	11.05	5.54
Severe AUD	11	20.00	6.99

^a Mild severity level meets 2–3 DSM-5 criteria, moderate level meets 4–5 criteria, severe level meets 6 or more criteria, according to the 13-item brief DSM-5 Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) diagnostic assessment screener.

Table 2. Sensitivity, specificity and Youden’s index for different AUDIT scores when assessing the three DSM-5 severity levels^a,b.

	DSM-5 mild AUD N = 21 AUROC=.93			DSM-5 moderate AUD N = 15 AUROC=.92			DSM-5 severe AUD = 11 AUROC=.99
Score	Sensitivity	Specificity	Youden’s index	Sensitivity	Specificity	Youden’s index	Sensitivity	Specificity	Youden’s index
1	1.00	.16	.16	1.00	.16	.16	1.00	.16	.16
2	1.00	.31	.31	1.00	.31	.31	1.00	.31	.31
3	1.00	.51	.51	1.00	.51	.51	1.00	.51	.51
4	1.00	.65	.65	.93	.66	.59	1.00	.66	.66
5	.91	.79	.70	.87	.79	.66	1.00	.79	.79
6	.62	.87	.49	.80	.87	.67	1.00	.87	.87
7	.57	.90	.47	.80	.90	.70	1.00	.90	.90
8	.43	.94	.37	.67	.94	.61	1.00	.94	.94
9	.33	.96	.29	.67	.96	.63	.91	.96	.87
10	.29	.98	.27	.67	.97	.69	.91	.97	.88
11	.24	.99	.23	.53	.98	.51	.91	.98	.89
12	.19	.99	.18	.33	.98	.31	.91	.98	.89
13	.14	.99	.13	.33	.99	.32	.91	.99	.90
14	.10	1.00	.10	.33	.99	.32	.82	.99	.81
15	.10	1.00	.10	.33	.99	.32	.82	.99	.81
16	.10			.27	1.00	.27	.73	1.00	.73
17	.10			.27	1.00	.27	.64	1.00	.64
18	.10			.13	1.00	.13	.54	1.00	.54
19	.05			.13	1.00	.13	.54	1.00	.54
20	.00			.13	1.00	.13	.54	1.00	.54
21				.07	1.00	.07	.46	1.00	.46
22				.00	1.00
23				.00			.36
24				.00

^a Mild severity level meets 2–3 DSM-5 criteria, moderate level meets 4–5 criteria, severe level meets 6 or more criteria, according to the 13-item brief DSM-5 Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) diagnostic assessment screener.

^b Optimal AUDIT cutoff scores for each DSM-5 severity level are indicated in bold text.