PSYCHOMETRIC EVALUATION OF A SHORT FORM OF THE INVENTORY OF DRINKING SITUATIONS

The Inventory of Drinking Situations (IDS) was developed to assess the likelihood of alcoholic relapse in eight high-risk situations. Previo us research questioned the factor stability of the instrument; therefo re, an alternative, short form of the IDS (IDS42) was developed and su bjected to preliminary examination. This project reports on the furthe r examination of the psychometric characteristics of the IDS42. The in strument's primary factor stability and higher-order factor structure were examined, and subscale means, standard deviations, alpha coeffici ents, interscale correlations and independence (unique variance) were determined. Also, the relationships between the IDS42 subscale scores and alcohol dependence, social desirability and demographic characteri stics were explored. Results of the principal components analysis supp ort the instrument's primary factor stability and indicate that the sc ales load onto one higher order dimension. The subscale internal consi stency estimates were very high. Significantly high positive correlati ons were found between the IDS42 subscales and alcohol dependence. The IDS42 is influenced by a socially desirable response set that may res ult in spuriously low IDS42 scale elevations. The subscales initially demonstrated high interscale correlations; however, estimates of uniqu e variance show that the IDS42 scales have an acceptable level of inde pendence. Except for a significant negative correlation with age for t hree subscales, demographic characteristics do not appear to influence IDS42 results. These findings support the use of the IDS42 in assessi ng the extent to which heavy alcohol use has occurred in five situatio ns. With this information, it may be possible to prepare to avoid or c ope with these situations in the future and, consequently, to reduce t he potential for relapse. However, additional evaluations, especially with a variety of populations, need to be completed.