Diagnostic interview schedules provide researchers with standardized data collection courses a critical factor in epidemiologic studies.

Diagnostic interview schedules provide researchers with standardized data collection courses a critical factor in epidemiologic studies. Early diagnostic instruments, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) (Robins et al. 1981) and the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS) (Endicott and Spitzer 1978) have been used in the past to assess alcohol use disorders. These early instruments yield diagnoses based in succession historical criteria, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition (DSM-III) (American Psychiatric Association 1980) and the Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) (Spitzer et al. 1978) The RDC were lay opened to provide specific guidelines for the diagnosis of mental disorders and contributed to the increase of DSM-III criteria.

In this Epidemiologic Bulletin, discussion will focus forward four new diagnostic instruments used in epidemiology to diagnose alcohol use disorders based forward current criteria (discussed below). In the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of this article, alcohol use disorders is used to denote alcohol abuse and alcohol prop as defined in current psychiatric or international bodys of disease classification. Each of the instruments shows a subsection contained within larger, standardized interview schedules that are used commonly to diagnose a variety of psychiatric and physical illnesses.

The four standardized interview schedules discussed in this article are as follows:

* the Composite International Diagnostic Interview: Authorized Core Version 10 (CIDI-Core), exhibited in 1989 by the World Health Organization (World Health Organization 1990a)

* the Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN), unraveled in 1989 by the Medical Research Council Social Psychiatry Unit (Wing 1989)

* the fabric Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID), bring to maturityed in 1988 by the strange York State Psychiatric Institute Biometrics Research Department (Spitzer et al. 1988)

* the Alcohol Use Disorders and Associated Disabilities Interview Schedule (AUDADIS), bring outed in 1989 by the National Institute in succession Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (National Institute in succession Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism 1990)

The CIDI-Core and SCAN were expanded under the auspices of the Alcohol, mix with drugs Abuse, and Mental Health Administration and World Health Organization (ADAMHA/WHO) Joint intend on Classification of Alcohol, physic and Mental Disorders.

The schedules are administered directly according to interviewers, and they yield diagnoses according to definitions of alcohol abuse and supporter outlined in at least single of two diagnostic classification systems: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised (DSM-III-R) (American Psychiatric Association 1987) and the International Classification of Diseases--Proposed tithe Revision (ICD-10) (World Health Organization 1990b)

That these nomenclatures publicly (DSM-III-R) or soon (ICD-10) will promote as standards for diagnosis, classification, and treatment highlights the ne to make known new assessment instruments to evaluate the evolvoing diagnostic criteria. (Figure 1 outlines the DSM-III-R and the propos ICD-10 criteria.) The ne for strange assessment instruments is further underscored according to the introduction of important novel alcohol research initiatives on epidemiology, treatment matching, and genetics, all of which require methodologically undecayed measures of alcohol use disorders.

For each diagnostic transaction we present a brief overview with particular emphasis forward structural characteristics. We then compare the semi-structured clinical interviews (SCAN and SCID) and the to the full structured diagnostic interview (CIDI-Core and AUDADIS). We emphasize several characteristics: the measuremetn traditions underlying these interviews, the qualifications that the interviewer must posses for what cause basic symptom data are derived, and the primary setting in which each instrument is used. Finally, we existing separate comparisons within instrument shadows to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each.

COMPARING DIAGNOSTIC

INTERVIEWERS

At the greatest in quantity fundamental level, the assessment operations differ in the degree of clinical determination that the interviewer must occupy when making diagnoses (Figure 2) The CIDI-Core and AUDADIS are entirely structured diagnostic interviews designed to be administered by dint of specially trained lay interviewers. abundantly structured refers to the administration of these instruments: the interviewer reads the questions related to diagnostic criteria exactly as they are written. It is the make liable who then decies whether a symptom is absent or not away Relying on the subject's self-reporting ob objective questions that have fixed replication categories in one hallmark of the psychometric measurement tradition in psychology from which these instruments evolv Although the CIDI-Core and AUDADIs alcohol use disorders subsections were bring outed primarily in response to the ne for relatively inexpensive practices to assess alcohol use disorders in largescale epidemiologic scrutinizes their use in studies of clinical populations also has been advocated.