[Alcohol drinking habits assessed by the AUDIT test. Reduced maximum levels doubled the number of women with dangerous alcohol drinking].

The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) was completed by 997 persons randomly sampled from the general Swedish population (80 percent response rate). Eighteen percent of the men and 5 percent of the women had hazardous or harmful alcohol use according to the 8+ score criterion. Since women are more sensitive to alcohol than men, a cut-off score of 6+ was suggested for them. The female prevalence of hazardous or harmful alcohol use then increased to nearly 11 percent. Hazardous or harmful alcohol use decreased with increasing age in both genders. The "binge drinking" question explained half of the total AUDIT variance and is thus the best predictor of heavy drinking in the test. The internal and test-retest reliability of the AUDIT was satisfactory. Reference values for different ages and genders are presented.