Reliability and Validity of the Chinese Version of the Addiction Severity Index

Objective: The addiction severity index (ASI) is one of the most commonly used assessment devices used in the field of substance abuse. There is no research on the Chinese version of the newest scale in China so far. The study is to validate a Chinese adaptation of the fifth version of the ASI instrument. Method: The Chinese version of the ASI was translated and revised based on the fifth English version. Psychometric properties of the ASI were tested through face-to-face interviews. Five hundred and twenty-six patients who had been in the methadone maintenance treatment clinic in Xi'an City.. Shanxi Province, for more than 3 months were interviewed by 3 trained interviewers. About 83% of the 526 interviewees were male. Analysis of internal consistency, reliability measures including test-retest and inter-rater correlation, and criterion validity were conducted. Results: Across 7 domains of the Chinese version of the ASI, Cronbach alpha coefficients ranged from 0.44 to 0.79, test-retest correlation coefficients ranged from 0.68 to 0.84, inter-rater correlations ranged from 0.74 to 0.98, and the criterion validity was 0.5. Conclusions: The Chinese version of the ASI has acceptable reliability and validity in a sample of drug-dependent patients.