Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 13, 2026

The Motivation for Alcohol Reward: Predictors of Progressive-Ratio Intravenous Alcohol Self-Administration in Humans
Published on: April 28, 2022
Addiction sciences and its psychometrics: the measurement of alcohol-related problems
Lorraine T Midanik1, Thomas K Greenfield, Jason Bond
1Alcohol Research Group, Public Health Institute, Emeryville, CA 94720-7400, USA. lmidanik@berkeley.edu
Aims:
The focus of this paper is on psychometric issues related to the measurement of alcohol problems.
Methods:
Taking a broad perspective, this paper first examines several issues around the use of instruments to provide diagnostic categories in surveys, including dimensionality, severity and alcohol consumption. Secondly, a discussion of some of the political issues surrounding measurement of alcohol problems is presented, including some of the conflicts that arise when the psychometric properties of commonly used instruments are questioned. Finally, newer statistical techniques that can be applied to scale development in the alcohol field are examined, including non-linear multivariate analyses and confirmatory/hypothesis-based methods.
Results And Conclusions:
Continued scholarly discussion needs to be encouraged around these psychometric issues so that instrument development and maintenance in the addiction sciences becomes an ongoing academic pursuit as we strive to measure alcohol problems in the best way possible.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Drug Abuse and Addiction: Pharmacological Phenomena
Substance Use Disorders Affecting Sleep
Understanding the concepts of physical dependence,...
Self-Presentation: Self-Monitoring and Self-Handicapping
CNS Depressants: Alcohol and Nicotine
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
Drug Dependence

