Severity of Opiate Dependence in an Australian Sample: further validation of the SODQ

Abstract

The Severity of Opiate Dependence Questionnaire (SODQ) was administered to 114 subjects attending an Australian drug dependency treatment centre. The psychometric properties of the SODQ were examined and compared with previous findings reported on American and British samples of opiate addicts. Severity of opiate dependence was assessed independently using a structured clinical interview based on DSM-III-R criteria (i.e. SCID-R). Together those analyses suggested (i) measurement difficulties with some aspects of the opiate dependence syndrome and (ii) only a modest relationship between subjects' self-report and clinicians' judgements of severity of opiate dependence.

Measurement of the severity of amphetamine dependence

“…A single factor also emerged in the analysis of 'Reinstatement After Abstinence' items. Further, the level of Cronbach's Alpha for each of those four sections was similar to those previously reported for the SODQ (Sutherland et al, 1986(Sutherland et al, , 1988Phillips et al, 1987;Burgess et al, 1989) and the SADQ (Stockwell et al, 1983). In the analyses of the pooled items from 'Physical Withdrawal', 'Affective Withdrawal' and 'Withdrawal Relief, the amount of variance accounted for by the first two factors extracted was highly comparable with those other reports and items on 'Physical Withdrawal' and 'Affective Withdrawal' could be reliably recovered on a separate factor from items on 'Withdrawal Relief.…”

“…The five items comprising the amphetaminemodified OSDQ/SDS were correlated separately with the SAmDQ and are shown in Table 4. The magnitude of those correlations is similar to those reported by Burgess et al, (1989) for the SODQ with the exception of the two items (i.e. "did you worry about your amphetamine use" and "did you wish you could stop") which are not significantly correlated with SAmDQ total scores in the present sample.…”

“…The correlations between OSDQ/SDS and SAmDQ total scores was 0.27 (p<0.01), which is similar to that found by Phillips et al (1987). Correlations between the other measures and SAmDQ scores are consistent with previous research with an Australian opiate abusing sample (Burgess et al, 1989); Table 4 shows that the correlations with age-related variables, quantity of amphetamine used, and the SAmDQ "narrowing of repertoire" item were all nonsignificant. Similar to Burgess et al, (1989), injection fi^equency and the SAmDQ "tolerance" item were significantly associated.…”

“…Sutherland et al, 1986). An exception is the 'Reinstatement Afrer Abstinence' section, which shows an improvement in comparison with the results of Phillips et al, (1987) and Burgess et al, (1989). Composite scores were calculated for the three sections of the SAmDQ (i.e.…”

“…A number of studies have demonstrated a high degree of consistency regarding the psychometric properties of the SODQ and SADQ (e.g. Stockwell et al, 1979;Phillips et al, 1987;Sutherland et al, 1988;Burgess, et al, 1989).…”