We describe the development and validation of a 25-item Adult Children of Alcoholics Tool
(ACAT) in three separate studies: (a) The ACAT was administered to a normative student sample
and a clinical outpatient sample to develop a scale with satisfactory reliability and criterion
validity; (b) these findings were replicated with a sample of social work students and another
clinical sample, providing further construct validation with other measures of current mental
health functioning (e.g., depression, internalized shame), and family of origin characteristics;
(c) using a third student sample, the ACATwas found to be significantly correlated with the Adult
Children of Alcoholics Index, suggesting measurement of a similar but not identical construct.
We discuss the implications of using the ACAT in social work practice as a measure of
internalized negative attributes associated with familial alcoholism, particularly, the need to
determine the cross-cultural generalizability of the "adult children of alcoholics" syndrome.
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