Objective: Drug Craving could be defined as a subjective motivational state associated with a strong desire to consume drugs. Craving is a subjective phenomenon; therefore, self-report (subjective) craving measures are usually referenced. Two well-known questionnaires for measurement of drug craving severity are Desire for Drug Questionnaire or DDQ (for instant craving) and Obsessive Compulsive Drug Use Scale or OCDUS [for craving in a period of time (periodic craving), usually one week]. In this study, we evaluated the content-related validity of these questionnaires for Persian-language speaking crystalline-heroin abusers.
Methods: After translation by two different groups, back translation and retranslation process of the DDQ and OCDUS questionnaires were achieved by an expert team in English language; we used them for evaluation of instant and periodic craving among 131 male crystalline-heroin abusers. Then, both DDQ and OCDUS questionnaire's scores were subjected to an exploratory principal components factor analysis (PCA). The criterion for factor extraction was an eigenvalue equal to or more than 1.
Results: The factor analysis of DDQ and OCDUS led to three factors for DDQ and four factors for OCDUS; each group of factors together explained 62% and 65% of the common factor variance, respectively. There was no significant correlation between different DDQ and OCDUS components and demographic factors. Nevertheless, approximately all of the seven OCDUS and DDQ components were significantly correlated to each other.
Conclusion: The Persian version of DDQ and OCDUS questionnaires could be considered as valid and reliable instruments for evaluation of drug craving in male crystalline-heroin Persian-language speaking abusers.