(Public Library of Science, 2019) López, Víctor; Paladines Costa, María Belén; Vaca Gallegos, Silvia; Cacho Fernández, Raúl; Fernández-Montalvo, Javier; Ruisoto Palomera, Pablo; Ciencias de la Salud; Osasun Zientziak
Background: the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) is the gold standard in assessing harmful alcohol intake, which is responsible for substantial morbidity and mortality.
Objective: the goal of this study is to evaluate the psychometric properties and factor structure of an Ecuadorian adaptation of a Spanish translation of the AUDIT in a large sample of college
students in Ecuador.
Methods: a total of 7905 students, including 46.26% males, and 53.75% females, from 11 universities
in Ecuador, were surveyed. The questionnaire was tested for two- and three-factor structures,
reliability, and correlations with other health related measures.
Results: the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test for sampling adequacy was satisfactory (.0885), and Bartlett´s
test for sphericity was significant (p < .001). Although both models showed a good fit to the
data, the two-factor model was preferred based on the high correlations between the factors
2 and 3 within the three-factor model (.86 for the total sample, .77 for females, and .91 for
males). The reliability for the two-factor model was good, as indicated by Cronbach´s α =
.806 (factor I) and .716 (factor II) for the total sample, .808 (factor I) and .667 (factor II) for
females, and .787 (factor I) and .728 (factor II) for males. Additionally, the AUDIT scores
positively correlated with several health-related measures: stress, psychological inflexibility,
loneliness and depression/anxiety symptomatology.
Conclusion: the Ecuadorian adaptation of the Spanish version of the AUDIT has good reliability, and
internal consistency and correlates with other health related measures, proving to be a reliable
tool that can be used by researchers and clinicians to screen hazardous alcohol intake
in college students.
