Substance Dependence Severity Scale - Reliability and validity for ICD-10 substance use disorders

The Substance Dependence Severity Scale (SDSS) is a semistructured intervie w that assesses the severity of the DSM-IV diagnoses of dependence and abus e and the ICD-10 diagnoses of substance dependence and harmful use across a wide range of substances. Previous research has demonstrated that the SDSS ' DSM-IV dependence scales are reliable and valid indicators of diagnostic severity. However, the ICD-10 scales have not been psychometrically tested. This study investigated the test-retest reliability, internal consistency, diagnostic concordance, and concurrent validity of the SDSS' ICD-10 depend ence and harmful use scales in 180 (112 male and 68 female) treated substan ce users. Test-retest reliabilities for the ICD-10 dependence scales ranged from good to excellent for alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and cannabis, Test-re test reliabilities for the SDSS' ICD-10 harmful use scales were in the good range for alcohol, cocaine, and heroin and the poor to fair range for cann abis. Internal consistency, diagnostic concordance, sind concurrent validit y results were comparable to the test-retest findings. These results suppor t the use of the SDSS for assessing the severity of the ICD-10 dependence a nd harmful use diagnoses. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserve d.