Perceived Alcohol Stigma: Factor Structure and Construct Validation

Introduction There has been an increasing interest in studying the stigma of alcohol use disorders (AUDs) yet scant research has evaluated the conceptualization and measurement of alcohol stigma. This study examined the measurement properties (i.e., factor structure) and validity of the alcohol‐adapted Perceived Devaluation‐Discrimination scale (PDD), which assesses the construct of perceived alcohol stigma (PAS). Methods Our sample included 34,386 respondents from the Wave 2 assessment in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a population‐representative survey of noninstitutionalized U.S. adults. Analytic procedures included confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Results One‐factor (perceived devaluation–discrimination) and 2‐factor (perceived devaluation, perceived discrimination) confirmatory factor analytic models fit the data well (Comparative Fit Index = 0.958, Tucker‐Lewis Index = 0.942, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.056; Comparative Fit Index = 0.962, Tucker‐Lewis Index = 0.946, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.054; respectively) when adjusting for item wording effects with a latent method factor. Despite having a better fit to the data, χ2 (1) = 542, p