ImplicitifyAI
Clinical instrument

Drug Abuse Screening Test, 10 items (DAST-10)

A 10-item yes/no screener for problems related to drug use (other than alcohol) over the past 12 months. The total is compared to published problem-level thresholds. Intended for use under clinician supervision.

This is a clinical instrument. It is not publicly self-administered; a clinician assigns it through a secure patient link.

You learn whether drug use is causing problems and how serious those problems look.

For anyone who wants to check honestly whether drug use is affecting their life.

It comes from addiction research on brief screening for drug-related problems.

Example score on the scale rangeChart drawn with invented example scores; not a real result.Example dataLower rangeMiddle rangeHigher rangeDrug-Use Problems
Sample result, example data. Illustrative chart with invented scores; it does not describe any real respondent.
Drug Abuse Screening Test, 10 items (DAST-10) box

What this test is

Welcome. A 10-item yes/no screener for problems related to drug use (other than alcohol) over the past 12 months. The total is compared to published problem-level thresholds. Intended for use under clinician supervision.

The measure

The Drug Abuse Screening Test, 10 items (DAST-10) was developed by Skinner (1982). It has 10 items, each answered on a No / Yes scale.

Skinner, H. A. (1982). The Drug Abuse Screening Test. Addictive Behaviors, 7(4), 363–371. Freely available for clinical and research use.

At a glance

Items
10
Response scale
No / Yes
Est. time
~1 min
Access
Assigned only · no per-report charge

What it measures

Ten yes-or-no questions ask about drug use other than as prescribed over the past twelve months: whether more than one drug was used at a time, whether a person could always stop when they wanted, blackouts or flashbacks, feeling bad or guilty about use, complaints from a spouse or parents, neglect of family, illegal activities to obtain drugs, withdrawal symptoms, and medical problems resulting from use. Alcohol and tobacco are excluded.

Skinner (1982) developed the original 28-item test at the Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto, modeled on screening approaches for alcohol, and the ten-item version was drawn from it as a brief form for routine use.

Answers are scored so that each problem-indicating response adds one point to the total. Lower totals indicate few or no drug-related problems over the past year; higher totals indicate more extensive problems. The report places the total within the published levels and describes what each tends to mean. It is a screen for problems, not a diagnosis.

The test is used in primary care, mental health and addiction services, and in research. On this site, the AUDIT and CAGE screen for alcohol problems, and the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test, Revised (CUDIT-R) focuses on cannabis.

Nomological network

The Drug Abuse Screening Test asks about consequences of drug use other than alcohol, and its scores converge with clinical diagnoses of drug use disorders and with the frequency and variety of drugs used (Skinner, 1982). A comprehensive review found that the short form predicts drug use disorders across clinical, psychiatric and workplace settings (Yudko et al., 2007).

It deliberately excludes alcohol, which gives it discriminant separation from alcohol screens even though the two problems often occur together (Yudko et al., 2007).

Validity evidence

The published cutoff yields sensitivity around 0.85 and specificity around 0.75 for drug use disorders (Yudko et al., 2007).

Example item

“Have you used drugs other than those required for medical reasons?”

NoYes

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Scoring & interpretation

Item responses are summed to a total score and compared against published screening cutoffs.

The report explains which published screening bands your score falls in and what they mean.

References

  1. Skinner, H. A. (1982). The Drug Abuse Screening Test. Addictive Behaviors, 7(4), 363–371.
  2. Yudko, E., Lozhkina, O., & Fouts, A. (2007). A comprehensive review of the psychometric properties of the Drug Abuse Screening Test. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 32(2), 189–198.

Sample report preview

The report shows your total score and where it falls across the range of possible scores, followed by a plain-language explanation of what scores in that region describe. Where the instrument has published interpretive bands, the report names the band and what it means. It closes with notes on how to read the result and on when a conversation with a qualified professional may be useful.

Report contents
SectionWhat it shows
ScoreYour scale score, computed with the published scoring key.
Score bandsWhere your score falls among the published bands listed on this page.

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