The purpose of this article was to provide an overview and detailed account of the ABCD Study (https://abcdstudy.org/) Substance Use module. The Substance Use module is administered to youth and parents at the baseline research session, 6-month phone interviews, and in-person year 1 follow-up sessions. The module covers detailed substance use patterns, factors impacting substance use risk, and consequences of substance use in youth. In assembling the battery for ABCD, we attempted to balance a number of competing demands including subject burden, psychometric properties, comprehensiveness, developmental appropriateness, timing, nonreactivity (e.g., not have our assessment procedures affect future substance use behaviors), and use in other studies. The battery presented above reflects those considerations with the recognition that one of the ABCD Study’s focus is on the effects of substance use on brain development and neurocognition with the attendant need to assess drug exposures in as much detail as possible with respect to the specific substance, quantity/frequency, dosage, potency, and route of administration. Consequently, considerable time was spent developing a detailed lifetime use and TLFB interviews that took these parameters into consideration.
