DUDIT: Drug Use Disorders Identification Test

What this assessment is

DUDIT is an 11-response drug-use screen with a total from 0 to 44. Its original decision points were preliminary and tied to early Swedish samples, so they are not universal diagnostic cutoffs. The result supports further assessment but cannot diagnose dependence, determine current danger, or select treatment.

Anne Berman, Hans Bergman, Tom Palmstierna, and Frans Schlyter developed the Drug Use Disorders Identification Test as a drug-focused counterpart to the AUDIT alcohol screen. The original evaluation included clinical, criminal-justice, and general-population samples.

Who it was designed for

The clinical validation involved 154 known drug users aged 18 to 74 from detoxification and criminal-justice settings. The Swedish general-population sample included people aged 16 and older.

Those samples do not establish one cutoff for primary care, schools, workplaces, every age group, or every translated form. Services should use population-specific evidence and define their decision rule before reviewing results.

How it is administered

The original DUDIT is a self-report form. Its recall is mixed rather than uniformly past-year: early responses ask about usual patterns, a later section focuses on the past year, and the closing responses distinguish past-year from earlier lifetime events.

Use the complete 11-response form and its published scoring convention. Record the exact language and version when results are compared. The EUDA instrument record provides the source form and background.

The original study treated some missing responses as zero under a sample-specific assumption. It did not establish a universal replacement or prorating rule. Do not generalize that method to routine scoring.

What it measures

DUDIT combines information about drug-use patterns, impaired control, strong desire to use, and harmful consequences. It focuses on drugs rather than alcohol.

The DAST-10 also screens drug-related problems, but it uses 10 yes-or-no responses, a uniform past-year timeframe, and a different interpretation system.

How scoring works

The first nine responses score from 0 to 4. The final two score 0, 2, or 4. Add all 11 values for a total from 0 to 44.

Higher totals indicate more reported drug-related problems. The original manual does not provide a complete set of mild, moderate, and severe bands, so do not create them or convert the total into a percentage.

How to interpret a DUDIT score

The original evaluation proposed these early decision points:

• 6 or higher for men and 2 or higher for women were preliminary population-reference points based on two standard deviations above sex-specific Swedish population means. They were not criterion-validated diagnostic boundaries.
• 25 or higher was evaluated for dependence in a selected sample with a high prevalence of drug problems. It is not a universal dependence cutoff.

The source provides only binary sex-specific guidance and no rule for people outside those categories. A service using another threshold needs evidence for its population and purpose.

Any result at or above a chosen decision point supports further assessment. It does not prove dependence or define severity under current diagnostic criteria.

What the score cannot tell you

DUDIT cannot identify every substance involved, explain why use occurs, or show the full effect on health, relationships, work, housing, and safety. A low total does not rule out serious harm.

The score also cannot triage intoxication, overdose, or withdrawal. If a person is unresponsive or has abnormal breathing after suspected drug use, seek emergency help without waiting for a score. See the CDC overdose response guidance.

Evidence and limitations

In the selected 154-person clinical and justice sample, a score of 25 helped distinguish dependence. The same study did not establish equally useful discrimination for harmful use or substance abuse, and its diagnostic references predated current criteria.

Report the exact version, population, decision rule, missing-data method, and follow-up process whenever DUDIT results are used.