Reliability and Validity of the Persian Version of Amphetamine Cessation Symptom Assessment (ACSA) Questionnaire in Iran

[Background:]Illegal use of psychotropic drugs has become a great problem around the world. Change in the traditional pattern of drug abuse to industrial drugs is one of the challenges faced today in Iran.[Objectives:] The present study was performed to determine the reliability and validity of the Persian version of the amphetamine cessation symptom assessment (ACSA) questionnaire in patients of residential medical center in Alborz province of Iran.[Patients and Methods] In this cross-sectional study, 106 patients accepted to participate from patients enrolled in the residential medical center of Alborz province. After the questionnaire was translated to Persian, face, content, and construct validity was assessed. Exploratory factor analysis and principal component analysis were used to assess the construct validity. Content validity index (CVI) was used to assess the content validity of the questionnaire. In order to determine the reliability of the questionnaire, internal consistency method with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used. The face validity step was based on the opinion of experts and patients that had just withdrew from the study and limited changes were inserted in the questionnaire.[Results:]Content validity for the entire of questionnaire was 86.5% and for questions individually was 80% and higher. In factor analysis 3 acceptable factors with higher than 1 were identified that justified 65.81% of the entire variance. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the entire questionnaire was 84%, and also for the first, second, and third factor this was 91%, 77%, and 96%, respectively.[Conclusions:] Results of this study showed that the questionnaire had appropriate reliability and validity in the evaluation of amphetamine withdrawal symptoms and could be used in similar activities and studies in Iran.