Factor structure of the Inventory of Drinking Situations

The Inventory of Drinking Situations (IDS; Annis, 1982) was developed to help identify situations in which a person may return to alcohol use after a period of abstinence. In this project, the IDS protocols of 543 male veterans were subject to factor analytic techniques to assess the factorial validity of the instrument. The results suggest that it is premature to assume the IDS items can be subsumed into eight high-risk categories. There is strong evidence that the IDS assesses three categories of high-risk situations, and some suggestion that two additional situations also may be assessed. Additional reliability and validity studies using a variety of populations are encouraged.