A french translation of the obsessive-compulsive drinking scale for craving in alcohol-dependent patients: A validation study in Belgium, France, andSwitzerland

The Obsessive-Compulsive Drinking Scale (OCDS) is an instrument developed t o measure cognitive aspects of alcohol craving. The aim of this study was t o validate the French translation of the OCDS according to the internationa l methodology as published by Hunt and coworkers (see text), including forw ard-backward translations, patient interviews (9 patients), patient's perce ption of acceptability (15 patients), and final validation within a treatme nt program (50 patients). All 74 patients were native French-speaking alcoh ol-dependent patients from Belgium, France, and Switzerland. The derived ag gregated total (TOT) score and both subscores corresponding to the obsessiv e (OB) and compulsive (CP) dimensions were shown to be asymptomatically nor mal. Good internal consistencies were found, with Cronbach alpha: TOT = 0.8 8; OB = 0.82; CP = 0.79. The test-retest procedure was used to examine intr arater reliability (r = 0.81). The construct validity was examined with lin ear correlation of the two main components: r(OB, CP) = 0.62; r(OB, TOT) = 0.86; r(CP, TOT) = 0.92. Principal-components analysis revealed two main fa ctors: the first factor representing the total scale score, while the obses sive and compulsive subscale scores were distributed along factor two. The translated scale seems to be psychometrically as valid as the original Engl ish scale and confirms the psychometric properties of the OCDS. Copyright ( C) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel.