Severity weighting would be useful if it could distinguish individuals with just a few positive criteria, all of which were mild, from those with just a few criteria, all of which were severe; however, our data clearly indicated that among individuals with just a few positive criteria, there was a very low likelihood that those criteria would be severe ones. Thus, severity is essentially redundant in light of the extremely high correlation between criterion severity and total number of positive criteria. An interesting way to confirm this interpretation would be to compare severity rankings based on different survey instruments, e.g., those used in the NESARC, NSDUH and other surveys, in terms of their associations with common AUD correlates. If the various rank orderings were equally strongly associated with the validating measures, this would provide even stronger evidence that severity reflects more the number than the nature of the criteria endorsed.
