THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPREHENSIVE ADDICTION SEVERITY INDEX FOR ADOLESCENTS (CASI-A) - AN INTERVIEW FOR ASSESSING MULTIPLE PROBLEMS OF ADOLESCENTS

The Comprehensive Addiction Severity Index for Adolescents (CASI-A) is a 45 to 90-minute comprehensive, semi-structured clinical interview f or evaluating adolescents who present for treatment at various provide r agencies. CASI-A modules and their individual items were selected an d revised based on theory, clinical wisdom, and adolescent experiences obtained during pilot interviews and focus groups. The CASI-A assesse s known risk factors, concomitant symptomatology, and consequences of adolescent alcohol/drug use within seven primary areas of functioning: education status, alcohol/drug use, family relationships, peer relati onships, legal status, psychiatric distress, and use of free time. The CASI-A is not a diagnostic or screening instrument, but rather a clin ical assessment tool that obtains clinically pertinent information des igned to guide treatment planning and to evaluate treatment outcome. T he CASI-A's design makes it suitable for administration in a variety o f settings, for repeat administration at posttreatment follow-up evalu ations, and for assessment of virtually all adolescents in treatment r egardless of their admission problem. Overall, the CASI-A has encourag ing but preliminary evidence of validity and internal consistency. Inf ormation collected soon after admission during administration of the C ASI-A by nonclinical interviewers corresponded quite well with that ob tained over the course of the adolescent's treatment stay by the entir e treatment ream. Revisions to the instrument are being made in those areas where correspondence between information on the CASI-A and that extracted from clinical records dropped below 75%, or in those early s ubscales, where alpha coefficients dropped below.6. As a result of the encouraging results reported in this paper, we are beginning addition al psychometric testing, refining the proposed scoring system, and dev eloping a computerized data entry, scoring, and report system.