SynthesisPsychological medicine2016
Meta-analysis of DSM alcohol use disorder criteria severities: structural consistency is only 'skin deep'.
Synthesis in Psychological medicine, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Prevalence of Cannabis Use Disorder: A Meta-Analysis of Population Surveys.Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs · 2025Pooled it
- Reliability of Differential Item Functioning in Alcohol Use Disorder: Bayesian Meta-Analysis of Criteria Discrimination Estimates.Assessment · 2022Pooled it
- Changes in DSM criteria following a culturally-adapted computerized CBT for Spanish-speaking individuals with substance use disorders.Journal of substance abuse treatment · 2020Trial
- Redundancy in the DSM-5 substance use disorder criterion set: Evidence from a national U.S. survey.Psychological assessment · 2026Article
- Daily Life Assessment of Seven Alcohol-Use-Disorder Symptoms.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2026Article
- How are children's perceptions of the home environment associated with a general psychopathology factor across childhood?Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
- Graduating With an Alcohol Problem? Associations Between Drinking, Willingness to Experience Consequences, Protective Behavioral Strategies, and Repeated Alcohol Problems Across the Senior Year of College.Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs · 2026Article
- Genetic risk for alcohol use disorder in relation to individual symptom criteria: Do polygenic indices provide unique information for understanding severity and heterogeneity?Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Rasch analysis of DSM-5 alcohol use disorder in a large inpatient sample.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2025Article
- The role of hyperarousal for understanding the associations between sleep problems and emotional symptoms in family caregivers of people with dementia. A network analysis approach.Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- Examination of the mild, moderate, and severe alcohol use disorder severity indicators using a nationally representative sample.Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors · 2024Article
- Tools to implement measurement-based care (MBC) in the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD): toward a consensus.Addiction science & clinical practice · 2024Article
- Should we promote alcohol problems as a continuum? Implications for policy and practice.Drugs (Abingdon, England) · 2024Article
- Predictors of symptom course in alcohol use disorder.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2023Article
- Diagnostic Criteria for Identifying Individuals at High Risk of Progression From Mild or Moderate to Severe Alcohol Use Disorder.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Temporal dynamics of emotional processing: Parsing trial-wise variance of the late positive potential using Generalizability Theory.Psychophysiology · 2023Article
- The Genetically Informed Neurobiology of Addiction (GINA) model.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2023Review
- Quantifying Severity of Preschool-Aged Children's Internalizing Behaviors: A Daily Diary Analysis.Assessment · 2023Article
- Conceptualization of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD): Can Theoretical or Data Driven Approaches Improve the Construct Validity of AUD?Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2022Article
- Is lower severity alcohol use disorder qualitatively different than more severe manifestations? An evaluation of multivariate symptom clusters.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundItem response theory (IRT) analyses of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and other psychological disorders are a predominant method for assessing overall and individual criterion severity for psychiatric diagnosis. However, no investigation has established the consistency of the relative criteria severities across different samples.
methodPubMed/Medline, PsycINFO, Web of Science and ProQuest databases were queried for entries relating to alcohol use and IRT. Study data were extracted using a standardized data entry sheet. Consistency of reported criteria severities across studies was analysed using generalizability theory to estimate generalized intraclass correlations (ICCs).
resultsA total of 451 citations were screened and 34 papers (30 unique samples) included in the research synthesis. The AUD criteria set exhibited low consistency in the ordering of criteria using both traditional [ICC = 0.16, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.06-0.56] and generalized (ICC = 0.18, 95% CI 0.15-0.21) approaches. These results were partially accounted for by previously studied factors such as age and type of sample (e.g. clinical v. community), but the largest source of unreliability was the diagnostic instrument employed.
conclusionsDespite the robust finding of unidimensional structure of AUDs, inconsistency in the relative severities across studies suggests low replicability, challenging the generalizability of findings from any given study. Explicit modeling of well-studied factors like age and sample type is essential and increases the generalizability of findings. Moreover, while the development of structured diagnostic interviews is considered a landmark contribution toward improving psychiatric research, variability across instruments has not been fully appreciated and is substantial.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.