Inter-rater reliability of the SCID alcohol and substance use disorders section among adolescents

Diagnostic interviews for substance use disorders tend to have high reliability among adults. We examined the inter-rater reliability of the substance use disorders section of the Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM: using 46 male and 25 female adolescent drinkers recruited from community and treatment sources. Inter-rater reliability was high for individual DSM-IV alcohol symptoms (kappa = 0.84-1.0) and diagnoses (kappa = 0.94), and for other substance use disorder diagnoses (kappa = 0.82-1.0). (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.