Over the years, a plethora of assessment instruments have been developed to evaluate psychoactive substance use disorders. Although the majority of these instruments have very good psychometric characteristics, their use has been largely confined to research studies. This could reflect an unawareness of the instruments by practitioners or that well validated research instruments may not be easily imported into clinical practice. To address these problems, the articles in this special series, unlike past reviews of substance abuse assessment instruments, focus on the clinical utility of assessment instruments for substance abuse.

The contributors to this special series were asked to prepare articles describing clinically useful and empirically validated instruments for specific assessment areas in the substance abuse field (e.g. comorbidity, adolescents). In making recommendations for which instruments to use and when, the authors were asked to consider several issues including the following: cost, length, training requirements, user friendliness, and scoring complexity. The authors have provided what we feel are thoughtful and scholarly considerations of the practical issues that concern clinicians. The merging of clinical research and practice as exemplified in these articles promises to make clinical practice more efficient and effective.