NIAAA Youth Screen
ValidatedNIAAA Youth Alcohol Screen (two-question screen)
9 – 18 yearsClinician, Self~1 min7 questions
Fit the questions into a pre-visit screening tool or the clinical interview; if at all possible ask them when you are alone with the patient. Choose the question set that aligns with the patient’s school level, as opposed to age, for patients aged 11 or 14. Exclude alcohol use for religious purposes.
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
NIAAA’s early-detection alcohol screen for children and adolescents. One question asks about friends’ drinking — an early warning sign — and one about the young person’s own past-year drinking frequency. The question order and wording depend on school level, and an empirically derived chart combines age and drinking days into a risk level linked to brief advice, brief motivational interviewing or referral.
Evidence · provisional
The questions and risk cut points were empirically derived from 2000–2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health data on more than 166,000 youth aged 12–18 (Chung et al., 2012) and from longitudinal studies; past-year drinking frequency had better sensitivity and specificity for alcohol use disorder symptoms and dependence than quantity measures, with age-specific cut points. At publication NIAAA noted the two questions had not yet been clinically tested, so treat risk levels as estimates to be combined with clinical judgement.
Source & licence
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention for Youth: A Practitioner’s Guide. NIH Publication No. 11-7805, revised October 2015. Produced in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics. Chung T, Smith GT, Donovan JE, et al. Drinking frequency as a brief screen for adolescent alcohol problems. Pediatrics. 2012;129(2):205–212.
Licence: Public domain (U.S. Government work) — NIAAA states its information and publications may be reproduced or copied without permission in the United States; please credit NIAAA as the source.
Credit NIAAA; do not alter content in a way that changes its meaning. Answer options for drinking days are the column ranges of NIAAA’s risk-estimator chart; the friends’ quantity question is open-ended in the Guide (options here are counts).
Official source ↗