El presente trabajo de investigación fue realizado con el apoyo de una Beca "Ramón Carrillo-Arturo Oñativia", categoría iniciación,

Aims To examine the reliability and validity of the widely used Addiction Severity Index (ASI). Material Thirty-seven studies of the psychometric performance of the ASI. Findings The inter-rater and test-retest reliabilities of the severity ratings and composites scores vary from excellent to unsatisfactory. High internal consistencies have been reported regularly for only three of the seven composite scores (medical status, alcohol use, psychiatric status). The remaining four composite scores (employment status, drug use, legal status, family/social relations) have low consistencies in at least four different studies. Coefficients of criterion validity are often low. Conclusions There is a discrepancy between the psychometric performance of the ASI and its purported clinical, administrative and research uses.

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Alcoholic beverages have multiple objective uses that can be analyzed to some degree independently of prevailing cultural attitudes. Three main uses which are directly based on the physical properties of beverage alcohol as a substance are identified: nutritional use. medicinal use and use as an intoxicant The following physical properties of beverage alcohol are singled out for discussion. medicinal effects, caloric content, liquid state, taste and intoxicating effects. The use of alcohol as a gift and for sacral purposes are examples of the derived uses that are based on its cultural meanings rather than on its physical properties In consuming alcohol, its nutritional, med icinal and intoxicating effects are always simultaneously present. Thus the different uses interact on the level of drinking behavior without distinct boundaries The histoncally dominant use is of prime importance, however, from the perspective of the dynamics of cultural regulation. Restraining the side effects of nutritives is different from domesticating an intoxicant. Cul tures in which nutritional use is of little historical importance are faced with the latter task In a critique of Pittman's typology, it is argued that Italy and France, on the one hand, and the Jews, Scandinavians and Camba, on the other, are variations of two basic types with regard to alcohol. In Italy and France, the nutritional use of alcohol is historically dominant, but the French have developed more tolerant attitudes towards the intoxicating side effects of wine Among the Jews, the Scandinavians and the Camba alike, alcohol is an intoxicant, but these three cultures have developed alternative nor mative solutions for the regulation of its use.

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