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A growing body of research has established a high co-morbidity in the rates of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and substance abuse. The co-occurrence of these two conditions and the negative impact of untreated ADHD on the course and treatment of substance abuse highlights the need for ADHD assessment in individuals seeking substance abuse treatment. In this article, we investigated the clinical utility of the Attention Deficit Scales for Adults (ADSA) in a sample of substance abusers in an outpatient treatment program by assessing its sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and likelihood ratios at two potential cut-off levels (161 and 181) using a DSM-IV based ADHD diagnosis as the criterion. The ADSA had strong reliability (Cronbach's alpha .93; Guttman split-half .92) and correlated well with DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. Sensitivity and specificity of the device were relatively strong at both cut-off levels, as were the positive and negative predictive values.

According to one hypothesis, self-report measures of narcissism help describe a psychological continuum related to self-esteem. Most of the previous support for this idea appeared in studies of undergraduates responding to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1981) along with other self-report instruments. In this project, results consistent with the continuum hypothesis were obtained when Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) narcissism scales were correlated with depression in adults receiving treatment for alcoholism. Essentially identical outcomes emerged in a second sample of state psychiatric hospital patients. A third study upheld the hypothesis when narcissism scales were correlated with clinical assessments rather than self-reports of depression. None of these findings were easily explained in terms of alternative interpretations of self-reported narcissism, and these data demonstrate that empirical support for the continuum hypothesis was not limited to the NPI, undergraduates, or self-report measures.

Recently, Weed, Butcher, McKenna, and Ben-Porath (1992) introduced two new scales for assessing alcohol and drug abuse with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989): the Addiction Potential Scale (APS), an empirically derived measure similar to the MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale (MAC; MacAndrew, 1965), and the Addiction Acknowledgement Scale. Like the MAC, the APS was designed to identify the personality dimensions associated with substance abuse. Although there has been evidence to support the discriminative validity of the APS among samples of abusers, nonabusers, and psychiatric inpatients (Greene, Weed, Butcher, Arrendondo, & Davis, 1992; Weed et al., 1992), there has been no attempt to determine the personality dimensions tapped by the APS. Thus our study investigated the internal complexities of the APS. Using MMPI-2 protocols from a sample of alcoholic and psychiatric inpatients, we subjected the APS to a principal components analysis with subsequent varimax rotation. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to name the components that were identified. Five components consistently emerged across settings: Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction with Self, Powerlessness/Lack of Self-Efficacy, Antisocial Acting-Out, Surgency, and Risk-Taking/Recklessness, Clinical advantage gained from a knowledge of the internal structure of the APS was illustrated using 6 patients from the alcoholic sample. A rational approach to validating the empirical structure of the APS was discussed as a potential avenue for future research.

We evaluated the efficacy of the Addiction Potential Scale (APS) and the Addiction Acknowledgement Scale (AAS), two new scales designed to assess substance abuse problems with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2), in samples from settings different from those used in their development. Results replicate earlier findings that both scales discriminate between psychiatric and substance abuse samples and do so more effectively than other substance abuse scales designed for use with the MMPI and carried over to the MMPI-2. Results also suggest that APS may be more resistant than AAS to response distortion.