Mental health assessment
Free AUDIT Alcohol Use Self-Assessment
Take the World Health Organization's 10-question alcohol screening questionnaire. It is the most widely validated instrument of its kind, takes about three minutes, and your answers never leave your device.
Frequently asked questions
What is the AUDIT?
The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test is a 10-item screening questionnaire developed by the World Health Organization and published by Saunders and colleagues in 1993. It was designed for use in primary care to identify hazardous and harmful drinking early, before dependence develops, and it is the most extensively validated alcohol screening instrument in use.
How is the AUDIT scored?
Questions 1 to 8 score 0 to 4. Questions 9 and 10 score 0, 2, or 4 only, because they offer three answers rather than five. The maximum is 40. The WHO risk zones are 0 to 7 low risk, 8 to 15 hazardous, 16 to 19 harmful, and 20 or above possible dependence.
Is the cutoff different for women?
A lower cutoff of 7 is sometimes recommended for women and for adults over 65, reflecting differences in how alcohol is metabolised and distributed. This tool applies the standard cutoff of 8 for everyone and states the alternative here rather than asking for your sex, since the adjustment is a clinical judgement rather than a fixed rule.
What counts as one standard drink?
Roughly 10 g of pure alcohol, which is about a small glass of wine, a half pint of ordinary-strength beer, or a single measure of spirits. Standard-drink definitions vary between countries, so the figure your national guidance uses may differ slightly.
About this screening tool
The AUDIT was developed by the World Health Organization through a six-country collaborative project and published by Saunders, Aasland, Babor, de la Fuente, and Grant in 1993. It is free to use. This screener reproduces the standard 10-item version with the WHO's published risk zones, and it is provided for information rather than as a substitute for clinical assessment.
References
- Saunders JB, Aasland OG, Babor TF, de la Fuente JR, Grant M. Development of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). Addiction. 1993;88(6):791-804.
- Babor TF, Higgins-Biddle JC, Saunders JB, Monteiro MG. AUDIT: The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, Guidelines for Use in Primary Care. 2nd ed. World Health Organization, 2001.
Your AUDIT result in context
The AUDIT was built for a specific job: finding people in the middle of the range, whose drinking is raising their risk but who would not consider themselves to have a problem. Screening the visibly dependent was never the point, because they were already identifiable without a questionnaire.
That design shows in the structure. The first three questions ask about quantity and frequency, which most people answer accurately. Questions 4 to 6 cover the dependence features, and questions 7 to 10 cover consequences, which is where a pattern reveals itself even when the reported quantity seems ordinary.
Under-reporting is the known limitation, and it is not usually deliberate. People routinely underestimate pours at home, forget rounds, and answer for a typical week that excludes the atypical ones. If your answers felt like an underestimate as you gave them, the real score is likely higher than the one shown.
How to bring this to a clinician
Alcohol is one of the few subjects where people routinely expect judgement from a clinician and routinely do not receive it. Screening at this scale exists because early conversations work.
- Give the number rather than a description. 'I scored 17 on the AUDIT' is more useful than 'I drink a fair bit'.
- Say what a heavy week looks like as well as a typical one. Clinicians are interested in the range, not the average.
- Mention morning symptoms specifically: shaking, sweating, nausea, or anxiety that eases after a drink. These change the safety plan.
- Bring up sleep, mood, and any medicines you take, since all three interact with alcohol in both directions.
- Ask directly about safe reduction if you drink daily. Stopping abruptly is the part that carries medical risk.
If you are not ready to change anything, that is still worth saying. Brief interventions are designed to be useful at that stage, and a clinician can record a baseline that makes a later conversation easier.
Other screens you might also take
Alcohol use, mood, anxiety, and sleep affect each other in both directions. These brief screens can help separate them.