OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to know evidences of validity and reliability of the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT). METHODS: For this purpose, we considered 547 college students from Fortaleza (CE) with a mean age of 21.6 years (sd = 4.86, varying from 18 to 53), mostly male (51.5%), single (91.4%) and catholic (62.5%). The participants answered the AUDIT and demographic questions. Looking to know AUDIT's factorial structure, we carried out a principal component analysis. Additionally, in order to evaluate its reliability, we calculated Cronbach's alpha (internal consistency), Pearson correlation r and intraclass coefficient correlation - ICC (test-retest). Also, descriptive statistics were evaluated. RESULTS: According to the principal component analysis using oblimin rotation, the bifactorial structure of the AUDIT proved to be consistent, once all items showed satisfactory saturations exceeding |0.40|, with the first factor explaining 47.5% of the total variance with alpha of 0.84 and Factor 2 explaining 11.6% of the total variance with alpha of 0.69. The results of the test-retest showed strong correlation between data obtained in the first (t1) and in the second (t2) applications (r tt = 0.94, p < 0.01), with no significant difference between the means in both applications (m t1 = 0.37, sd = 0.49, = 0.34 m t2, dp2 = 0.47, p > 0.05) with satisfactory ICC (0.96). CONCLUSIONS: The findings support the psychometric adequacy of the AUDIT, with the exploratory factor analysis pointing as more satisfactory the structure with two factors, and also showing its good temporal stability.
AUDIT; alcoholism; validation studies; screening instrument; parameters
