ABSTRACT
Clinical, neurobiological and neuropsychological hypotheses suggest that the dimension of alcohol craving includes the concept of both obsessive thoughts about alcohol use and compulsive behaviors toward drinking. Anton et al. (1995) developed a 14 items self-rating scale, the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale (OCDS) which includes items for assessing three dimensions: global, and the obsessive and the compulsive subdimensions. In this study, we included 156 patients, 105 men and 51 women, who met DSM IV diagnostic criteria for alcohol dependence. The mean age of our population was 39.1 +/- 11.2 years without difference between sexes. We did not found any correlation between the CAGE score and the OCDS total score or the obsessive and compulsive subscores (respectively, r = .15, r = .10 et r = .18). Moreover, we did not found any correlation between OCDS scores and mean daily alcohol consumption (r = .18, r = .16, r = .19). This could indicate that the dimension measured by the scale was somewhat independent of actual drinking. As such, it might act as an independent measure of the "state of illness" for alcohol-dependent patients. The test-retest correlation for the OCDS total score was .95 and the obsessive and compulsive subscales test-retest correlations were .93 and .89 respectively. The internal consistency of the items of the OCDS was high (alpha = .89). Principal component analysis had identified in the french version of the OCDS, three factors accounting for 63.5% of the total variance. These results indicate that the french version of the OCDS seems to validly measure a dimension of alcohol dependence. The ease of administration, reliability, and concurrent validity of the OCDS makes it particularly useful as an outcome measurement tool for various clinical therapeutic protocols in alcoholism.
