Usefulness of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-Korean Revised Version in Screening for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition Alcohol Use Disorder among College Students

Background: There is a distinction in alcohol consumption behavior between adults and college students. This study aims to verify the usability and the optimal cutoff point of Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-Korean revised version (AUDIT-KR) for screening alcohol use disorder in college students when the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM), 5th edition diagnostic criteria is applied. Methods: A total of 922 college students living in Daejeon were enrolled and divided into two groups based on how many items they corresponded to among DSM-5 alcohol use disorder diagnostic criteria: those who corresponded to ${\geq}2$ of the 11 items were classified into the patient group (107 males, 89 females) while the others into the control group (311 males, 415 females). The participants were evaluated using AUDIT-KR to find the optimal cutoff point for screening alcohol use disorder, sensitivity, and specificity. Results: The mean${\pm}$standard deviation scores in the AUDIT-KR were $12.76{\pm}7.27$, $10.72{\pm}4.62$ for males and females, respectively, in the patient group. In contrast, in the control group the scores were $6.26{\pm}5.23$ and $3.95{\pm}3.59$ in males and females, respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (95% confidence interval) regarding alcohol use disorder screening by AUDIT-KR was 0.768 (0.715-0.821) and 0.883 (0.848-0.919) for males and females, respectively. The optimal cutoff point of alcohol use disorder for males was >9, sensitivity 64.49%, and specificity 76.85%. The optimal cutoff point for females was >6, sensitivity 82.02%, and specificity 80.48%. Conclusion: This study suggested that AUDIT-KR can be used as a screening tool for alcohol use disorder in groups of college students when DSM-5 diagnosis criteria are applied.