The CAGE questions are most effective when asked as part of a general health history and should not be preceded by questions about how much or how frequently the patient drinks.
Report details · optional
Shown on the report and stored with the screening record. Use initials or a code, not full names.
Answers, results and report details are recorded by OpenScreener to monitor and improve the service. Privacy
About this screener — evidence, source
Ewing’s four-question screen for alcohol problems, named for its mnemonic: Cut down, Annoyed, Guilty, Eye-opener. It detects alcohol abuse and dependence (lifetime) rather than hazardous drinking, so it misses less severe risky drinking; use the AUDIT or AUDIT-C for that.
Evidence · validated
A review of reliability and validity studies (Dhalla & Kopec, 2007) found high test–retest reliability (0.80–0.95) and, in medical and surgical inpatients, ambulatory medical patients and psychiatric inpatients, average sensitivity 0.71 and specificity 0.90 for alcohol abuse and dependence. Performance was varied in primary care and poor in white women, prenatal women and college students, and it is not suited to detecting less severe drinking.
Source & licence
Ewing JA. Detecting alcoholism: the CAGE questionnaire. JAMA. 1984;252(14):1905–1907. Developed by Dr John Ewing, founding Director of the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Licence: Free for non-profit use — the Bowles Center statement reads: “No other permission is necessary unless it is used in any profit-making endeavor in which case this Center would require to negotiate a payment.”
Cite Ewing (1984). Wording is the clinical form distributed by the Bowles Center (via AHRQ/USPSTF); the exact research wording is in the 1984 JAMA article.
Official source ↗