Grade Scale for the Twenty Questions
If you answered "yes" to one of the Twenty Questions for Drinkers, you might be an alcoholic.
If you answered "yes" to two of the questions, you are probably an alcoholic.
If you answered "yes" to three or more questions, you are almost certainly a candidate for the Twelve Step Programs.
The Twenty Questions were not selected by the use of quantitative scientific methods.
They depend on pattern recognition.
Dr. Robert Seliger saw that there were common patterns found among alcoholics.
Perhaps he also saw that there are many kinds of alcoholics and that it was not necessary that a person answer yes to all twenty questions in order to recognize that their drinking was causing them problems.
When the questions first appeared in print, they were attributed to Johns Hopkins University. The University has rejected the association of is name with this questionnaire in no uncertain terms.
- "'The Johns Hopkins Twenty Questions: Are You An Alcoholic?' was developed in
the 1930s by Dr. Robert Seliger, who at that time was a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was intended for use as a self-assessment questionnaire to determine the extent of one’s alcohol use. It was not intended to be used by professionals as a screening tool to help them formulate a diagnosis of alcoholism in their patients. We do not use this questionnaire at any of the Johns Hopkins substance abuse treatment programs. To the best of my knowledge, there have never been any reliable or validated studies conducted using the Hopkins Twenty Questions. I advise you to consider using other instruments such as the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test or the CAGE, both of which have proven reliability and validity as reported in the scientific literature.”
- So, the questions should be attributed to Dr. Robert Seliger of Johns Hopkins
(in the 1930s), not to Johns Hopkins itself as they no longer advocate their use. I note as well that the e-mail I sent to you all earlier from the Literature Desk at GSO stated that the hospital had requested that GSO not attribute those questions to their institution in the pamphlet "Memo to an Inmate Who May Be an Alcoholic."
- If you know anyone who would like permission to reprint this piece, I have a
contact at Johns Hopkins to whom I can refer them. I have been in contact with the faculty member who knew the history of this document and who recommended that we not use it. She was very adamant about it -- in a second e-mail to me, she said that she’d grant permission to any AA group who wanted to use it, but that she really recommended that we don’t.