Amphetamine Cessation Symptom Rating Scale:Development, Reliability And Validity

Objective:The aim of this study was to develop an Amphetamine Cessation Symptom Scale (ACSS) with good reliability and validity for the Chinese patients with amphetamine use problems.Method:Data was collected among amphetamine dependents who met inclusion criteria in Drug Addiction Treatment centers in Hunan Province. Open-ended interviews, literature review and the clinical experience of an addiction treatment center experts initially identified ACSS items library, we carried out a small sample pre-test (n=20) to determine the draft of the scale. Formal test of the draft contained200subjects, through the project analysis and exploratory factor analysis, items that didn’t meet the relevant standards were deleted, and the preliminary theoretical framework of the scale was formed. To evaluate the Psychometric indicators of the scale, we chose split-half reliability and Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient to test the scale’s reliability, and the scale’s validity was tested by evaluating content validity, expert validity, construct validity and criterion validity.Results:(1)Exploratory principal component analysis of the20items identified that the scale had four factors explaining54.895%of the total variance, four factors were labeled as follows:Fl:Carving, F2:Mood disorders,F3:Physical symptoms,F4:Psychotic symptoms.(2) Internal consistency analysis showed that the split-half coefficients of the total ACSAS and the four factors were0.883,0.807,0.829,0.796,0.718respectively, and the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients of the total ACSAS and the four factors were0.846,0.807,0.811,0.793,0.759respectively.(3)Internal correlation analysis showed that the correlations between the item scores and total scores ranged from0.380to0.641, the correlations between the four factor scores and total scores ranged from0.488to0.762. Correlations among all the factor scores ranged from0.166to0.409, all the correlations were significant (p<0.0l).(4) The correlations between the ASCAS total scores and CGI, HAMD, HAMA and PANSS were significant (p<0.Ol), ranging from0.464to0.657. The correlations coefficients with similar scales were higher than those with diverse scales. The correlations coefficients between the mood disorders factor scores and HAMD, HAMA was the highest,0.625and0.466respectively, The correlations coefficients between the physical symptoms and PANSS was0.547. There was a significant positive correlation (p <0.01) between the total and factor scores with amphetamine use days and the total usage one month before cessation, and the difference method results showed that total scale and the factor scores of high-use group were significantly higher than the low-use group, the differences were statistically significant (p<0.01). Conclusion:(1) Factor analysis studies showed the structure of the ACSAS was pretty reasonable.(2) Psychometrics testing showed that the ACSAS achieved good to excellent levels of internal consistency, content validity, construct validity, and criterion validity.