To address these limitations, O’Neill and colleagues (2002) created the Alcohol Sensitivity Questionnaire (ASQ). In creating the ASQ, O’Neill and colleagues aimed to sample a wide range of effects that could be experienced across numerous contexts on both the ascending and descending limbs of the blood alcohol concentration curve. Like the SRE, the ASQ asks respondents to indicate the number of drinks they must consume in order to experience alcohol-related effects. Specifically, the ASQ contains 15 items (see Table 1),1 of which nine tap effects typically associated with lower doses and stimulation (e.g., feeling more talkative; more flirtatious) and six tap effects typically associated with heavier doses and sedation (e.g., feeling nauseous, passing out). For each item, respondents indicate whether or not they have experienced the effect from drinking alcohol; for each endorsed effect, they estimate the minimum number of drinks they must consume in order to experience the effect (for lower dose/light drinking effects) or the maximum number of drinks they could consume without experiencing the effect (for larger dose/heavy drinking effects). These differing referents are designed to provide estimates of limits on sensitivity across the spectrum of common alcohol effects.
