The major objective of the present paper was to evaluate the diagnostic utility and characteristics of DSM-IV AUD criteria for assessing severity of AUD disorder by analyzing data from a national sample of adolescents and adult current drinkers pooled over four survey years (2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005). To our knowledge, this is the first study that has examined a large nationally representative sample of adolescents and adults within a comparable measurement model. The comparability of the distributions of DSM-IV AUD diagnoses and symptom criteria across the four survey years provides strong evidence of reliability of these national estimates. Consistent with a previous analysis of the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (Harford et al., 2005), the most prevalent AUD criteria included tolerance; time spent obtaining alcohol, drinking, or getting over its effects; and hazardous use. These items were consistently higher in prevalence in each gender by age group, whereas the prevalence of the remaining eight symptom criteria was lower. This disparity in prevalence may introduce bias into DSM-IV AUD assessment and indicate problems with the measurement of these
