The Semi-Structured Assessment for the Genetics of Alcoholism (SSAGA) was developed by the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism for use in its large scale, multi-site study of alcohol use disorders. The SSAGA is a comprehensive interview that obtains information about physical, psychological, and social manifestations of alcohol and other substance use disorders in adolescents and adults23–25 as part of its diagnostic assessment of all major Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5) psychiatric disorders.26 The SSAGA also exhibits very good diagnostic reliability25 and validity (as measured by comparisons with diagnoses obtained using best-estimate procedures27 and with the Schedule for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry).28 In sum, the SSAGA is an excellent instrument for assessing current and past psychiatric problems in clinical and general population samples. It has been used in over 250 studies in the US and has been translated into 9 foreign languages (Hesselbrock, personal communication). The SSAGA was previously used to study the association between particular internalizing characteristics and diagnoses (e.g., suicidality, major depressive disorder) and substance use disorders,29–35 but to our knowledge there exists no
