The Perceived Devaluation-Discrimination scale adapted for measuring alcohol-related stigma was administered to W2 respondents after the alcohol section of the interview to assess perceived alcohol stigma (Link et al. 1987; Ruan et al. 2008). Items assessed respondents’ perceptions of how “most other people” think about (perceived devaluation) or act towards (perceived discrimination) people who might carry the alcoholic label (i.e. those who are former alcoholics or have been in alcohol treatment). Responses were measured with a six-point Likert-type scale, ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Six items with reverse wording were recoded so that higher scores indicated higher levels of perceived alcohol stigma. We created a summed scale from all 12 items (α=0.82) (Ruan et al. 2008) yielding a range of 12–72. Prior analyses of the NESARC data reported perceived alcohol stigma scores of M=37.8 (SD=8.47) for the general population (Glass et al. 2013a).
