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The AUDIT-C is the first three items of the AUDIT published as a standalone screener. It exists for one reason: the full 10-item AUDIT is too long for routine primary-care intake. The 3-item version takes well under a minute and still produces an actionable hazardous-use flag.

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What it measures

Past-year alcohol consumption:
  1. Frequency of drinking
  2. Typical quantity per drinking day
  3. Frequency of heavy episodic drinking (6+ drinks)
Each item is rated 0–4.

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When to send it

  • Mental-health intake when you want a brief substance-use baseline but not the full AUDIT
  • Routine re-screening between full AUDIT administrations
  • Embedded in a multi-measure intake panel where the time budget is tight
  • US Department of Veterans Affairs uses AUDIT-C as the default routine alcohol screen — same logic applies in any high-volume primary-care or community-mental-health context
If the AUDIT-C is positive, you can follow up in-session with the remaining seven AUDIT items or switch to the full instrument for the next re-administration.

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How Rivet scores it

Sum of 3 items, range 0–12.

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Cutoffs

  • ≥3 for women, ≥4 for men — Bush et al. 1998. Sensitivity and specificity hold up well in community and primary-care populations.
  • ≥7 — strong signal for probable alcohol use disorder; warrants a fuller diagnostic conversation.

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AUDIT-C vs AUDIT

The AUDIT-C is the first three items of the AUDIT — the consumption questions — scored on their own. So this is not a choice between two instruments so much as a choice about how much of one you administer. Three items ask how often the client drinks, how much, and how often they drink heavily. That’s enough to flag hazardous consumption and it takes under a minute, which is why it’s become the default brief alcohol screen in primary care. What it cannot tell you is whether there are dependence symptoms or whether the drinking is causing problems — those are items 4 through 10. The usual pattern is AUDIT-C as the routine intake question, full AUDIT when it comes back positive and you need to know how serious it is.

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Is it free to use?

Yes. Derived from the WHO AUDIT via the VA, and public domain.

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Citation

Bush, K., Kivlahan, D. R., McDonell, M. B., Fihn, S. D., & Bradley, K. A. (1998). The AUDIT alcohol consumption questions (AUDIT-C): An effective brief screening test for problem drinking. Archives of Internal Medicine, 158(16), 1789–1795. Public domain — derived from the WHO AUDIT.

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When not to use it

The AUDIT-C tells you consumption is hazardous; it doesn’t tell you why or how much disability the drinking is causing. For dependence symptoms and alcohol-related problems (the other two AUDIT subscales), use the full AUDIT. For non-alcohol substance use, AUDIT-C is silent — use CAGE-AID or DAST-10.

AUDIT (full)

The full 10-item screen with three subscales.

CAGE-AID

The briefest combined alcohol-and-drug screen — 4 yes/no items.