Usefulness of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test–Korean Revised Version in Screening for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition Alcohol Use Disorder among College Students

Kim, Sun Jin; Kim, Jong Sung; Kim, Sung Soo; Jung, Jin Kyu; Yoon, Seok Joon; Lee, Jung Yoon; Kim, Ji Han

Abstract

BACKGROUND
There is a distinction in alcohol consumption behavior between adults and college students. This study aims to verify the usability and the optimal cutoff point of Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-Korean revised version (AUDIT-KR) for screening alcohol use disorder in college students when the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM), 5th edition diagnostic criteria is applied.
METHODS
A total of 922 college students living in Daejeon were enrolled and divided into two groups based on how many items they corresponded to among DSM-5 alcohol use disorder diagnostic criteria: those who corresponded to â‰¥2 of the 11 items were classified into the patient group (107 males, 89 females) while the others into the control group (311 males, 415 females). The participants were evaluated using AUDIT-KR to find the optimal cutoff point for screening alcohol use disorder, sensitivity, and specificity.
RESULTS
The mean±standard deviation scores in the AUDIT-KR were 12.76±7.27, 10.72±4.62 for males and females, respectively, in the patient group. In contrast, in the control group the scores were 6.26±5.23 and 3.95±3.59 in males and females, respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (95% confidence interval) regarding alcohol use disorder screening by AUDIT-KR was 0.768 (0.715-0.821) and 0.883 (0.848-0.919) for males and females, respectively. The optimal cutoff point of alcohol use disorder for males was >9, sensitivity 64.49%, and specificity 76.85%. The optimal cutoff point for females was >6, sensitivity 82.02%, and specificity 80.48%.
CONCLUSION
This study suggested that AUDIT-KR can be used as a screening tool for alcohol use disorder in groups of college students when DSM-5 diagnosis criteria are applied.