The Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST-Lite): translation and reliability of the Malay version

Abstract

ABSTRACTBackground Early screening and interventions are necessary to curb the negative consequences of youth substance use. ASSIST-Lite is the short form of the Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST 3.0) for rapid screening of substance-use disorder. This study aims to translate and validate the ASSIST-Lite questionnaire into the Malay language.Methods The ASSIST-Lite instrument, consisting of 6 main components with 3–4 items and two extra items was translated via the forward-backward process. Face and content validity was assessed by expert panels from relevant fields. Internal reliability was measured using Kuder-Richardson 20, and test-retest reliability was measured using Cohen’s Kappa.Results The item level of content validity index (I-CVI) is 1.00 for all items. There were 511 respondents, and a majority were Malays. The age range was 13 to 49 years old, with a mean age of 17 (SD = 6.392). Both internal and test-retest reliability showed satisfactory results with alpha value between 0.772 to 0.882 and Kappa value between 0.8 to 1, respectively.Conclusions The Malay version of ASSIST-Lite is reliable to screen substance use and its severity risk. However, further studies are required to evaluate its sensitivity and effectiveness in the clinical setting.KEYWORDS: Substance usetranslationpsychometricscreeningaddiction AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia for funding this study under the grant LRGS/1/2019/UKM/02/2/3, as well as Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre and the Ministry of Education Malaysia for the support in conducting this study.Author contributionSW: Conceptualization, Resources, Writing – review & Editing, Supervision, Funding Acquisition. MAZ: Methodology, Investigation, Writing – Original Draft, Data Curation. ADA: Formal Analysis, Writing – Review & Editing, Visualization. NAAW: Methodology, Validation. MRAM: Data Curation, Formal Analysis.Ethics approval and consent to participateThis study was approved by the Institution’s Ethics Committee. Consent from the parents (for participants below the age of 18) and the participants themselves were taken prior to the commencement of this study.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Availability of data and materialsThe datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study cannot be made publicly available as permission is needed from the higher authorities.Additional informationFundingThis study was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia under the grant [LRGS/1/2019/UKM/02/2/3].