Substance Use Screening & Assessment Instruments

"Selected By" Sources

These expert sources each have selected instruments for use in research and clinical work. We use their selections, along with other references, to identify instruments receiving a "gold star," to indicate instruments with proven research validity and clinical utility.

APA: Instruments included in the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Handbook of Psychiatric Measures. Washington DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2001.

EIB: The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction's Evaluation Instrument Bank. http://eib.emcdda.eu.int/

CAMH: Instruments included in Directory of Client Outcome Measures for Addictions Treatment Programs by the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health (CAMH), formerly the Addiction Research Foundation. Toronto, Ontario: Addiction Research Foundation, 1994.

METRIC: Measurement Excellence and Training Resource Information Center -- This web site is a project of the Veterans Administration enter for Quality of Care and Utilization Studies. It contains detailed information about numerous measures, particularly those used in VA research. The site includes a section on the fundamentals of measurement theories, terms and topics, and the use of measurements in practice. Please note: this center was defunded in 2006 and its web site has been removed.

NFATTC: Instruments included in the Northwest Frontier Addiction Technology Transfer Center's Substance Abuse Screening and Assessment Instruments for Adolescents. Mary Anne Bryan (ed.). Salem, OR: NFATTC, August 2001. [Download PDF | View NFATTC website]

NIAAA: Instruments included in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's (NIAAA) book, Assessing Alcohol Problems: A Guide for Clinicians and Researchers. http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/Assesing%20Alcohol/index.htm

NIDA CTN CAB: Instruments selected by the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network for inclusion in their Common Assessment Battery.

NIDA SI: Instruments included in the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) book Assessing Drug Abuse among Adolescents and Adults: Standardized Instruments. Rockville, MD : National Institute on Drug Abuse, Community and Professional Education Branch, 1994.

TIPS: CSAT's Treatment Improvement Protocols. Included as sources in the Instrument database are numbers 16, 21, 24, 28, 31, 35, 40, and 42. http://www.treatment.org/Externals/tips.html

WHO: Standardized instruments used or developed by the World Health Organization, including the ASSIST and others: http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/research_tools/en

VA-CHCE: The VA Center for Health Care Evaluation has has developed a series of measures for use by researchers, several of which specifically address substance use disorders. http://www.chce.research.va.gov/measures.asp