The Severity of Dependence Scale (SDS): psychometric properties of the SDS in English and Australian samples of heroin, cocaine and amphetamine users

Abstract

The Severity of Dependence Scale (SDS) was devised to provide a short, easily administered scale which can be used to measure the degree of dependence experienced by users of different types of drugs. The SDS contains five items, all of which are explicitly concerned with psychological components of dependence. These items are specifically concerned with impaired control over drug taking and with preoccupation and anxieties about drug use. The SDS was given to five samples of drug users in London and Sydney. The samples comprised users of heroin and users of cocaine in London, and users of amphetamines and methadone maintenance patients in Sydney. The SDS satisfies a number of criteria which indicate its suitability as a measure of dependence. All SDS items load significantly with a single factor, and the total SDS score was extremely highly correlated with the single factor score. The SDS score is related to behavioural patterns of drug taking that are, in themselves, indicators of dependence, such as dose, frequency of use, duration of use, daily use and degree of contact with other drug users; it also shows criterion validity in that drug users who have sought treatment at specialist and non-specialist agencies for drug problems have higher SDS scores than non-treatment samples. The psychometric properties of the scale were good in all five samples, despite being applied to primary users of different classes of drug, using different recruitment procedures in different cities in different countries.

Gambling Problems Among Community Cocaine Users

“…Severity of cocaine dependence was estimated using the severity of dependence scale (SDS) (Gossop et al 1995).…”

Neuropsychological effects associated with recreational cocaine use

“…They also completed the UEL drug use questionnaire (Parrott, Sisk and Turner, 2000) to assess drug use within the last month with additional questions pertaining to patterns of cocaine use, subjective effects associated with their cocaine use and a measure of dependence. Dependence was measured using the Severity of Dependence Scale (SDS; Gossop et al, 1995). This is a 5-item questionnaire; each item is rated on a 4-point scale; 'never', 'sometimes', 'often' and 'nearly always', with scores awarded from 0-3 respectively.…”

Single versus multiple drug focus in substance abuse clinical trials research

“…Many instruments with established reliability and validity permit assessment of quantity, frequency, or severity of multiple classes of substance use including the Timeline Followback Method (Sobell and Sobell, 1992), the Addiction Severity Index (Alterman et al, 2000;McLellan et al, 1985), the Substance Dependence Severity Scale (Miele et al, 2000), and the Severity of Dependence Scale (Gossop et al, 1995(Gossop et al, , 1997. Unfortunately, instruments for assessing dimensions of substance abuse other than quantity/frequency tend to cover only a single class of substances.…”