Abstract
There is a need for a short instrument to assess the multiple areas of dysfunction as well as drinking dyscontrol in alcoholics. The Brief Addiction Rating Scale (BARS), covering 10 areas of functioning has been developed to meet this need. This report describes the rationale and development of this new scale. A high interrater reliability (0.9) on all the items of the scale and the ease of administration justify its clinical and research use.
Keywords: Alcohol dependence, severity assessment, BARS instrument
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (256.5 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- McLellan A. T., Luborsky L., Woody G. E., O'Brien C. P. An improved diagnostic evaluation instrument for substance abuse patients. The Addiction Severity Index. J Nerv Ment Dis. 1980 Jan;168(1):26–33. doi: 10.1097/00005053-198001000-00006. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]