Behaviors & Attitudes Drinking & Driving Scale (BADDS)

DESCRIPTION

The Behaviors & Attitudes Drinking & Driving Scale (BADDS) is a 43-item questionnaire that can be administered individually or in a group setting. The BADDS, a paper-and-pencil test, helps identify risky attitudes and behaviors related to drinking and driving, and can be used to assess the effectiveness of prevention and intervention programs. The test has five subscales:

• Rationalizations for Drinking and Driving (RD)
• Lenient Attitudes toward Drinking and Driving (LA)
• Likelihood of Drinking and Driving (LD)
• Drinking and Driving Behaviors (DB)
• Riding Behaviors with a Drinking Driver (RB)

The BADDS is designed for individuals 18 years or older from various racial and ethnic backgrounds who are fluent in English. The test requires at least a 3.1 reading grade level. The BADDS takes approximately 10 minutes to complete and can be used in a pretest/posttest format.

Test-takers record their responses on a double-sided single sheet. The RD, LA, and LD scales use a 5-point rating scale. The DB and RB scales are calculated from one question each with two sub-questions, asking about the number of times the respondent drove after drinking (DB) or rode with someone who had been drinking (RB) in the past month. Sixteen additional items assess the respondent’s alcohol use, awareness, and history. Five items collect demographic data: gender, age, race/ethnicity, highest grade completed, and marital status.

Scoring is done using a double-sided single profile sheet, with one side for a pretest profile and the other for a posttest profile. The respondent’s item scores for each subscale are transferred to the profile sheet, and the total scores are calculated and compared. Subscale scores are categorized as low, moderate, or high. The posttest side of the sheet has a section to record score differences between the pretest and posttest for each subscale. A Class/Group Change Assessment sheet is available to record the pretest and posttest scores of a class or group, calculate the overall pretest and posttest averages, determine the average change between the pretest and posttest, and calculate the overall percent improvement.

DEVELOPMENT

The BADDS and an earlier version, the Attitudes on Drinking and Driving Scale (ADDS), were created to evaluate the effectiveness of Fatal Vision goggles in alcohol prevention programs. The only guidance for item development provided in the test materials is exemplified by the RD scale, which was “based on typical reasons people give to justify drinking and driving.”

TECHNICAL DETAILS

The BADDS has been standardized on several groups, including:

• College students
• Adult DUI offenders
• An adult traffic court group
• An adult substance use disorder (SUD) treatment group
• A high school group

The demographic information for these groups, when provided, includes age, gender, race/ethnicity, marital status, and highest grade completed. The samples were 87-94% White. An examination of the relationship between BADDS scores and demographic characteristics indicated that men scored higher than women on the RD, LA, and LD scales. No evidence was found suggesting that gender or other demographic characteristics influenced the relationships between the subscales.

INTERNAL CONSISTENCY RELIABILITY

The internal consistency and test-retest estimates support the reliability of the BADDS. Seven references are cited in the test manual to support the instrument’s reliability, but four of these are unpublished raw data reports and one is an unpublished master’s thesis. One of the remaining articles does not include the Lenient Attitudes toward Drinking & Driving (LA) scale in its analysis.

VALIDITY

Data in the test manual are “aggregated.” Using dichotomized data of “nondrinkers” and “drinkers,” nondrinkers had lower BADDS subscale scores. Drinkers and nondrinkers had significantly different scores on items assessing perceptions of safe drinking and driving. Significant differences were reported in the percentages of drinkers and nondrinkers for each of the three categories of each BADDS subscale. For example, of the 325 participants with high scores on the RD subscale, 87% were drinkers. Significant correlations in the expected directions were found between the three levels of classifications for each BADDS subscale and the percentage of participants who tested positive for a substance use disorder on the SASSI-3. Significant and expected correlations were reported between higher BADDS scores and three scales of substance misuse on the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory-3 (SASSI-3).

Convergent evidence for the instrument’s validity shows that individuals in the high classifications of the BADDS subscale scores were more likely to have driven under the influence of substances other than alcohol.

COMMENTARY

The BADDS is a promising tool to assess the impact of clinical and educational interventions related to drinking and driving. Additional studies should examine the factor structure of the BADDS, expand the standardization groups, and provide justification for the three levels of subscale classifications. Although some correlational psychometric studies have shown statistically significant results, the large sample sizes of some groups (572 to 1,850) necessitate extra caution in the interpretation of shared variance estimates as low as 2%. Similarly, other studies report significant chi-square results, but some have relatively low effect sizes. Information on assessing clinically significant differences between pretest and posttest measures would also be helpful. The test manual does provide sample assessment reports; website and telephone support is available for scoring and interpretation. The test authors emphasize that decisions should not be made using only this instrument; BADDS data should be integrated with information from other sources.

SUMMARY

The BADDS is designed to assess attitudes and behaviors related to drinking and driving. The BADDS is easy to administer and score, and interpretation is straightforward. The test manual is well-written and includes telephone and web-based support for test users. Ongoing development and refinement of the BADDS has the potential to result in a powerful tool for assessing individual attitudes in clinical and educational settings.

REVIEWER’S REFERENCES

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