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Abstract

The adolescent version of the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory (SASSI-A; Miller, 1990) was developed to assess unacknowledged substance abuse. Despite its widespread use in clinical and forensic settings, the SASSI-A has not been cross-validated. The current investigation examined its effectiveness in classifying 317 adolescent offenders on a unit of dually diagnosed inpatients. Although the sample was limited in its number of nonusers, the SASSI-A had an unacceptably high number of false positives (68.4%) but was moderately effective at classifying nonadmitting alcohol and drug users (75.6%). As evidence of criterion-related validity, elevations on the SASSI-A scales had low to moderate correlations with interview-based data on impairment related to substance abuse. However, its scales appeared to be significantly affected by ethnicity, even when level of impairment was a covariate. It appears, then, that the SASSI-A (a) should not be employed to classify adolescents as chemically dependent and (b) has a circumscribed role in screening for suspected substance abuse.

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Evaluation of Adolescent Offenders with Substance Abuse

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