Assessing the structure of the CAST (Cannabis Abuse Screening Test) in 13 European countries using multigroup analyses

Abstract

Our aims are to describe and explain the structure of the Cannabis Abuse Screening Test (CAST) across countries. Standard statistical analyses fail to describe and explain several variables simultaneously while taking account of the group structure of individuals. The 2011 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD): 5204 last-year cannabis users aged 15-16 from 13 European countries. Multigroup principal component analysis (mgPCA) and multigroup partial least squares (mgPLS). MgPCA shows that the CAST has a two-dimensional structure (frequency of use/problems and non-recreational use/dependency symptoms). All the countries present a good concordance with the common structure, except Kosovo, Lichtenstein and Romania. MgPLS shows that three explanative variables (in a total of eight) are mainly related with the CAST (the frequencies of cannabis use in the last 12 months and in the last 30 days and the age at first cannabis use) while Kosovo, Lichtenstein and Romania also present specificities. The CAST structure appears stable in the 13 countries except for Kosovo, Lichtenstein and Romania that also show specific relationships between the CAST variables and their determinants.

Psychometric properties of CAST for early detection of problematic cannabis use in Spanish adolescents

“…The indicators of the CAST internal consistency obtained were high and exceeded those obtained in some prior studies (Bastiani et al, 2013;Legleye et al, 2012;Legleye et al, 2011). Most studies had suggested a unidimensional structure of the CAST (Bastiani et al, 2013;Fernandez-Artamendi et al, 2012;Gyepesi et al, 2014), yet other studies suggested a bidimensional CAST model (Cuenca-Royo et al, 2012;Legleye, Eslami, & Bougeard, 2017). In our study, the confirmatory factorial analysis with one and two factors in both versions of the tool (CAST-f and CASTb) revealed that the goodness-of-fit indicators of the two-factor model are slightly better than those of the one-factor model.…”

Validation of the French version of the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test—Revised and comparison with the Cannabis Abuse Screening Test for screening cannabis use disorder in a psychiatric sample

“…While the scales were never previously compared directly in the same sample, some previous studies conducted in adolescent samples found that the CUDIT‐R performed better in terms of sensitivity (0.93) than specificity (0.70) [12]. By contrast, the full CAST appeared generally slightly more specific than sensitive when the recommended cut‐off is applied [13,14], although this ratio can be adjusted by using lower thresholds [15]. These findings mean that in this population the CAST identifies more people with CUD, but at the cost of more false positives, compared to the CUDIT‐R‐Fr, based on the initial cut‐offs.…”

Increased Resting State Triple Network Functional Connectivity in Undergraduate Problematic Cannabis Users: A Preliminary EEG Coherence Study

“…Good psychometric properties (e.g., high internal consistency) of both versions have been reported [48,49]. Satisfactory cross-cultural adaptation has been also documented [50,51]. In a sample of Italian young adults, using the Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), Bastiani et al [40] maximized item homogeneity of the CAST and obtained the best score in relation to the importance of the response categories for each item.…”