The present study was undertaken to examine the utility of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) as screening instruments for primary care clinic patients. We examined: 1) patients' willingness to complete the scales; 2) the level of agreement between the screening instruments and DSM-III diagnosis of Major Depressive Episode, based on the NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS); 3) the effect on detection rates of raising the cut-off score for each depression screen; and 4) the factor structure of the CES-D in our primary care sample versus findings from general population studies. The CES-D and BDI performed comparably as depression screening instruments. Both produced too many false positives when standard (low) cut-off scores were applied. However, when stringent cut-off scores were used, results suggested that either the CES-D or BDI might assist physicians in reliably detecting depressed patients, without an overload of false positives. Comparison of our findings with those from other studies suggest that depression screening instruments may be particularly helpful with older primary care patients. The CES-D factor analysis highlights the need to look more closely at the relevance of positive affect to the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of depressive disorders in primary care practices.

Aim  To review and discuss measurement issues in survey assessment of alcohol consumption for epidemiological studies.Methods  The following areas are considered: implications of cognitive studies of question answering such as self‐referenced schemata of drinking, reference period and retrospective recall, as well as the assets and liabilities of types of current (e.g. food frequency, quantity–frequency, graduated frequencies and heavy drinking indicators) and life‐time drinking measures. Finally we consider units of measurement and improving measurement by detailing the ethanol content of drinks in natural settings.Results and conclusions  Cognitive studies suggest inherent limitations in the measurement enterprise, yet diary studies show promise of broadly validating methods that assess a range of drinking amounts per occasion; improvements in survey measures of drinking in the life course are indicated; attending in detail to on‐ and off‐premise drink pour sizes and ethanol concentrations of various beverages shows promise of narrowing the coverage gap plaguing survey alcohol measurement.