Assessing Craving for Alcohol

Craving for alcohol is common among alcohol-dependent people. Accordingly, measures to assess craving can play important roles in alcohol research as well as in alcoholism treatment. When developing or employing craving-assessment instruments, researchers and clinicians must consider numerous factors, such as the specific characteristics of craving to be evaluated, the instrument’s psychometric properties, and the timeframe over which craving is assessed. The measures most commonly used for assessing craving in clinical settings are single-item questionnaires, although several multi-item questionnaires also have been developed. Behavioral measures (e.g., amount of alcohol consumption or performance on cognitive tests) and psychophysiological measures (e.g., changes in salivation, respiration, or heart rate) are being used primarily in research settings. The assessment of craving can have numerous clinical benefits, such as helping the clinician to evaluate the severity of a patient’s alcohol dependence, to select appropriate treatment approaches, and to monitor changes throughout a patient’s treatment. The role of craving assessment in predicting treatment outcome, however, remains controversial.