Although understanding and quantifying alcohol stigma itself is an important step in determining the impact of stigma on the recovery from alcohol problems, we are aware of few alcohol-specific stigma measures. For example, researchers have adapted vignette measures to assess the perceived stigma of both alcohol use and the receipt of alcohol treatment (Fortney et al. 2004), and the Self-Stigma in Alcohol Dependence (SSAD) scale (Schomerus et al. 2011), an adaptation of the Self-Stigma of Mental Illness Scale (SSMI; Corrigan et al. 2006) assesses the extent to which alcohol-affected persons have internalized alcohol stigma. The Perceived Devaluation-Discrimination scale (PDD) (Link, 1987), developed to assess perceived stigma regarding mental illness, has been adapted to measure the perceived stigma of AUDs, referred to as perceived alcohol stigma (PAS) (Ruan et al. 2008). Like the original measure, it assesses expectations of devaluation and discrimination by querying how “most other people” think or act towards persons with current or prior alcohol problems.
