Elsevier

Addictive Behaviors

Volume 18, Issue 3, May–June 1993, Pages 337-345
Addictive Behaviors

The cast-6: Development of a short-form of the children of alcoholics screening test

https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-4603(93)90035-8Get rights and content

Abstract

The 30-item Children of Alcoholics Screening Test (CAST) is shortened to a 6-item scale (CAST-6) using Principal Components Analysis of CAST responses for three distinct samples: outpatient substance abusers, outpatient psychiatric patients, and medical students. The face validity, internal consistency, and discriminatory ability of the CAST-6 are examined. The CAST-6 is judged to compare favorably with the full CAST and to provide a more efficient way to identify adult children of alcoholics.

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    The six items were factor analytically derived from the original 30-item version of the scale (Jones, 1983) and required respondents to rate statements as either ‘true’ or ‘false’. The CAST-6 reliably discriminates between children of parents with harmful drinking and children of parents without alcohol related problems and has been shown to demonstrate a high degree of internal consistency and test–retest reliability in young adolescents as well as in other populations (Hodgins et al., 1993). Hodgins and Shrimp (1995) found that CAST-6 correlated well with the 30-item version (r = 0.92–0.94) and identified children of parents with problem drinking with a high degree of accuracy (97%) at the cut-off score of three or more.

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