Other models have sought to understand the nature of alcohol problems toward a more theoretically driven concept of severity. For Edwards (Edwards & Gross, 1976; Edwards, 1986), the alcohol dependence syndrome consists of core, dependence-related behaviors such as loss of control over drinking and compulsions to drink. Greater severity is understood as having symptoms from more classes of the syndrome. However, not all symptoms are equivalent, in that specific symptoms may reliably relate to levels of dependence, whereas others may indicate what Edwards described as “alcohol related disabilities” that reflect important impairments but are limited as markers of dependence. Skinner (e.g., Skinner & Allen, 1982) formalized measurement of the core dependence syndrome by creating the Alcohol Dependence Scale (ADS), a subset of items of the Alcohol Use Inventory (AUI: Horn et al., 1974; Wanberg, Horn, & Foster, 1977) that reflected the primary factor underlying the AUI scales. Early research (Skinner & Allen, 1982; Morey et al., 1984) found that the ADS correlated with greater social consequences of drinking, greater psychopathology and health problems, and an increased likelihood of treatment noncompliance.
