Validity of a Gambling Scale for the Addiction Severity... : The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (original) (raw)

Article

1 Department of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut Health Center, 263 Farmington Avenue, Farmington, Connecticut 06030-3944. Send reprint requests to Dr. Petry.

This research was supported in part by NIH grants R01-MH60417, R01-MH60417-Supp, R01-DA13444, R01-DA14618, R29-DA12056, P50-AA03510, P50-DA09241, and M01-RR06192, and the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation Investigator Program.

The author thanks the staff and clients at the Compulsive Gambling Treatment Program and its Bettor Choice Programs, BlueRidge Center, Alcohol and Drug Recovery Center, and Community Substance Abuse Centers, Inc. for their participation in this project. The author also thanks Dr. Mark Litt, who provided helpful suggestions on the manuscript, and Mark Austin, Scott Bennett, JoAnne Boccuzzi, Jaime Kelley, Bonnie Martin, Cheryl Molina, and Jackie Tedford, who assisted in data collection and management.

Abstract

This study assessed the validity of an adaptation of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) for evaluating severity of gambling problems. Participants (N = 597) from four different populations (pathological gamblers enrolled in a treatment study, pathological gamblers initiating outpatient treatment at a community-based program, frequent gamblers recruited from advertisement, and substance abusers) completed the ASI, along with a supplemental gambling subscale (ASI-G). Internal consistency of the ASI-G was good (alpha = .90), and a principal components analysis indicated a single factor explained 73% of the variance in responses. ASI-G scores demonstrated excellent convergent validity with other measures of gambling and convergent validity with external sources, including collateral informant and clinician-rated reports. ASI-G scores discriminated among the samples tested. Temporal stability of ASI-G scores was high during a 1-month period for patients with substance abuse disorder who were not seeking gambling treatment. For treatment-seeking gamblers, the number of treatment sessions attended was significantly associated with reductions in ASI-G scores. Together, these data suggest that the ASI-G subscale may be a useful tool for assessing severity of gambling problems in a variety of populations.