Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

The opioid crisis consuming the U.S. has resulted in approximately 115 daily deaths that may be partially due to prescribing practices of opioid-based medications. Screeners used to assess for opioid abuse are often dichotomous, face-valid, and allow individuals to easily hide their substance abuse. The current study examined if brief screeners can be used to detect opioid abuse that is intentionally hidden, and proposed that modifying dichotomous response sets to Likert-scales will increase variability in responses, resulting in better detection of hidden substance abuse. It was hypothesized that individuals instructed to malinger will have lower scores on the original and Likert-scale versions as compared to honest responders. Additionally, it was hypothesized that Likert-scale versions will demonstrate greater internal consistency among both malingerers and honest responders as compared to dichotomous versions, and Likert-scale versions will demonstrate better prediction of group membership as compared to the original dichotomous versions of the measures. Finally, it was hypothesized that the SASSI-4 will be the best measure at predicting group membership. Participants were 226 undergraduate students and an online substance abuse population. Participants were asked to complete screeners examining substance abuse and demographic information. Results indicated that individuals instructed to malinger had lower scores on all measures compared to honest responders, some Likert-scale versions demonstrated greater internal consistency, the DAST and ORT were the best predictors, and the SASSI-4 was one of the worst measures compared to all screeners. Overall, results provide support to further explore the utility of brief screeners in detecting hidden substance abuse.

Download

Share

COinS