The reliability and construct validity of two measures of addictive personnality

FRANÇAIS :
L'objet de la présente étude est de comparer et de mettre en contraste la fiabilité et la validité d'une mesure de la personnalité addictive, l'Echelle de l'Addiction développée par Gossop et Eysenck en 1980, et de l'Echelle de l'Alcoolisme de Mac Andrew. Pour cela, les réponses d'un échantillon randomisé de la population sont examinées. La fiabilité de ces deux échelles est tout à fait basse. La comparaison avec d'autres mesures de la personnalité indique que l'Echelle de l'Alcoolisme est plus associée à des caractéristiques d'extraversion tandis que l'Echelle de l'Addiction est plus apparentée à des facteurs névrotiques.
ENGLISH :
Gossop and Eysenck developed a subscale of the EPQ that discriminates between drug addicts in treatment and nonaddicts. They called this scale the Addiction Scale (AS). Previously, MacAndrew developed an Alcoholism Scale (MAC) by comparing alcoholics and nonalcoholic psychiatric patients' responses on the MMPI. In the present report both scales were completed by 615 men and 642 women as part of the Winnipeg Health and Drinking Survey, a longitudinal study of personality and health. The reliability of both scales is quite low, 64 for the AS and 57 for the MAC. Correlations with other personality measures indicate that the MAC is more associated with extraversion-related characteristics whereas the AS is more associated with neuroticism-related factors. The AS was not associated with smoking for men only. Both scales were significantly correlated with various drinking measures, and the correlations were slightly higher for the MAC. (Authors'abstract)