Screening illicit substance use in college students: The Chinese version of the Drug Abuse Screening Test

•The Mandarin versions of DAST were one factor measure of illicit substance use.•The validity, reliability, sensitivity, and specificity were high among the DAST-10 and DAST-26. The area under the curve was 0.943 for DAST-26 and 0.940 for DAST-10.•The DAST-10 might be easy for utilization and a scale of choice for screening and brief intervention in the college students, while the DAST-26 remained its advantages at assessing more detailed problems. This study investigated the applicability of the Chinese versions of Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) to detect illicit substance use in college students. The data arising from a campus prevention program, Screening for Illicit Substance Use in College (SISUC), were utilized to explore the psychometrics of 26 items (DAST-26) and 10 items (DAST-10) versions of DAST in college students (CS group). A group of youth with illicit substance use were enrolled as the Illicit Substance Use group (IS group). A set of self-report questionnaires, including the Chinese version of DAST, were administered. A total of 1214 participants were recruited as the CS group and 208 as the IS group. The Cronbach’s alpha of DAST-26 was 0.74 in CS and 0.90 in IS; while 0.59 in CS and 0.78 in IS for the DAST-10. At a cut-off of 4 for DAST-26, the sensitivity was 87 % and specificity 97 %. As to DAST-10, a cut-off of 2 produced the sensitivity of 86 % and specificity of 96 %. The area under the curve was 0.943 for DAST-26 and 0.940 for DAST-10. The confirmatory factor analyses found a single-factor solution for the DAST-26 and DAST-10. With comparison to the DAST-26, the shorter version, DAST-10, may offer promise for detecting illicit substance use in college students.