AUDIT: the World Health Organization alcohol use testAUDIT
~3 min · 10 questions · Free partial report
This test contains sensitive content. Results are private and not shared with employers unless you explicitly consent.
Ten questions about your drinking, and the first three are the ones people expect: how often you drink, how much on a drinking day, how often it is six or more at once. The next three ask whether the drinking has begun to run itself, which is a different question from how much: not being able to stop once started, needing a drink in the morning, losing the night. The last four ask what it has cost, including whether someone else has said something. The AUDIT came out of a World Health Organization project in six countries (Australia, Bulgaria, Kenya, Mexico, Norway and the United States) and was built to find risky drinking early, in ordinary health care, before anything has gone properly wrong. Your total runs from 0 to 40 and the manual reads it against four zones: 0 to 7, 8 to 15, 16 to 19, and 20 to 40, each one attached to a different response, from education at the bottom to referral for a diagnostic evaluation at the top. It screens, and screening is a reason to look. It does not diagnose anything.
Ten questions about your drinking, the four risk zones the World Health Organization publishes for its own test, and a plain note about which two of these six languages are theirs and which four are ours.
- Put a number on the risk your current drinking pattern carries, using the instrument most of the world's health services use for exactly that. You get the 0 to 40 score in the metric the manual interprets, the zone it falls in with the response the manual attaches to that zone, and a reading of which of the three things the test measures produced your points: how much you drink, whether the drinking has started running itself, or what it has already cost. The manual's other published lines are stated with the group each belongs to, including the lower one it recommends for all women and for anyone over 65.
No signup required to start. The Partial Report is free at the end. The Complete costs $9.90, if and when you want it.
What this test measures
Alcohol use risk
The risk carried by your current drinking pattern, on the World Health Organization's own 0 to 40 scale. Ten questions cover three things and the total mixes them on purpose: how much and how often you drink (questions 1 to 3), whether the drinking has started to run itself (questions 4 to 6, about not stopping once started, needing a morning drink, and blacking out), and whether it has already cost something (questions 7 to 10, about guilt, missed obligations, injury, and other people saying so). Higher means more risk, and the manual reads the total against four zones rather than against a population. It measures a pattern over a period, not a person, and it is a screening signal rather than a diagnosis.
Zone I: low-risk drinking
Zone II: hazardous drinking
Zone III: harmful drinking
Zone IV: possible dependence
Your result falls into one of these bands.
Discover where you stand on each dimension.
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From first click to report.
The process is simple: you respond, the system calculates, and the result appears. No prior signup, no form, no waiting.
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Click "Start for free"
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Answer the questions
Multiple choice, with answer options that change from question to question (5 options for questions 1 to 8, 3 options for questions 9 and 10). Visible progress bar. You can pause and resume from any device after identifying yourself.
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Talk to an AI about your results. Ask how your profile applies to your career, what a high score means, or compare with other tests.
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| Free and paid, side by side | Partial Report (free, always) | Complete Report ($9.90) |
|---|---|---|
| Interpretive text per dimension, generated from your answers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Raw score for each dimension | ✓ | ✓ |
| One-paragraph overview reading | ✓ | ✓ |
| Everything in the Partial, expanded to 3–5 paragraphs per dimension | — | ✓ |
| Percentile per dimension, compared to reference norms | — | ✓ |
| Inter-dimensional chart with accessible data table | — | ✓ |
| Applied recommendations: career, relationships, self-care | — | ✓ |
| Certificate with public verification and PDF download | — | ✓ |
- ✓Everything in the Partial, expanded to 3–5 paragraphs per dimension
- ✓Percentile per dimension, compared to reference norms
- ✓Applied recommendations: career, relationships, self-care
- ✓Certificate with public verification and PDF download
You only pay after completing the test, if you want to go beyond the Partial.
- ✓Interpretive text per dimension, generated from your answers
- ✓Raw score for each dimension
- ✓One-paragraph overview reading
- ✓Free trial of the Integrative Chat, unlocked by your first test
Payment via PIX (instant) or credit card. Access for 1 year. After that, the report stays visible in read-only mode.
Why trust this instrument.
The AUDIT (World Health Organization, 2001, WHO/MSD/MSB/01.6a) screens for hazardous and harmful drinking with ten items in three blocks: consumption (1 to 3), signs that the drinking has begun to run itself (4 to 6), and consequences already incurred (7 to 10). Answer options are not uniform and are not made uniform here: item 1 asks a drinking frequency, item 2 a quantity per drinking day, items 3 to 8 a frequency over the last year, and items 9 and 10 an occurrence scored 0, 2 or 4 with no 1 and no 3. Items 1 to 8 score 0 to 4, so the total runs 0 to 40. No item is reverse keyed. There is no norm set and no percentile, because the World Health Organization publishes neither: interpretation is by the four risk zones of Box 6 (0 to 7, 8 to 15, 16 to 19, 20 to 40), reproduced with the response the manual attaches to each. The two other lines the manual publishes, 10 for greater specificity and 7 for all women and for anyone over 65, are stated in the report prose with the group they belong to rather than encoded as bands, because this platform does not condition a band on sex or age and encoding either one would silently apply it to everybody. Item 3 keeps six or more drinks as published: the manual allows lowering that number to the local standard drink, and a single web questionnaire has no single country to adapt to. English and Spanish are the versions the World Health Organization published, reproduced verbatim, including a typographical error present in the published Spanish sheet. Portuguese, Italian, French and German are NOESIS translations of the English original, not reviewed or approved by the World Health Organization: the Organization stated that it would not supply the versions it holds and expressly allowed ours instead, provided they are identified as ours.
- Authors:
- Saunders, Aasland, Babor, de la Fuente & Grant; Babor, Higgins-Biddle, Saunders & Monteiro
- Year:
- 2001
- Range
- α 0.83 – 0.83(1 scales)
- Average
- α 0.83(good)
Cronbach's alpha. Values above .70 are acceptable; above .80, good.
- Saunders, J. B., Aasland, O. G., Babor, T. F., de la Fuente, J. R., & Grant, M. (1993). Development of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT): WHO Collaborative Project on Early Detection of Persons with Harmful Alcohol Consumption II. Addiction, 88(6), 791-804. Babor, T. F., Higgins-Biddle, J. C., Saunders, J. B., & Monteiro, M. G. (2001). AUDIT: Guidelines for Use in Primary Care (2nd ed.). Geneva: World Health Organization. WHO/MSD/MSB/01.6a.
The theory behind this test.
Hazardous and Harmful Alcohol Use
Framework that separates drinking into a graded risk continuum rather than a yes-or-no diagnosis. It comes from the World Health Organization's ICD-10 vocabulary, where hazardous use is a pattern that raises the risk of harm before any harm has happened, and harmful use is a pattern that has already damaged physical or mental health. Dependence sits beyond both and is a separate category. The point of the distinction is timing: it was built to find people early, in general health care, while the pattern is still cheap to change, which is why the measurement asks about ordinary drinking behaviour instead of about symptoms of illness. Three things get read together and none of them alone: how much and how often a person drinks, whether the drinking has started to run itself, and whether it has begun to cost anything. A reading on this continuum is a screening signal about a pattern of behaviour over a period, not a statement about a person and not a diagnosis.
Learn more about this theory →Target Audience
Adults who drink and want an honest, non-moralising reading of where their pattern sits, and anyone who has wondered about it long enough to be searching for a questionnaire.
Recommended ages: 18+
Questions the report answers.
How much risk does your current drinking pattern carry?
Read the total against the manual's zones, and then read it against its own parts, because the same score arrives by different routes. Points concentrated in questions 1 to 3 mean quantity and frequency and nothing else yet. Points in 4 to 6 mean the drinking has begun to run itself, which is the part that predicts. Points in 7 to 10 mean it has already cost something, and question 10 counts other people noticing as evidence. The zones are 0 to 7, 8 to 15, 16 to 19 and 20 to 40, and the responses the manual attaches to them run from education through simple advice and brief counselling to referral for a diagnostic evaluation. Two lines the manual publishes and this scale does not apply automatically, because the platform does not condition a band on sex or age: 7 rather than 8 for all women and for anyone over 65, and 10 when specificity matters more than sensitivity.
Who benefits most.
Someone who has been counting quietly for a while
The question that brought you here is usually not whether you drink too much, it is whether the amount you already know about means something. Ten questions and a published scale is a faster answer than another month of wondering, and the zones tell you what the source thinks the next step is at your score.
Someone who cut down and wants to check
The AUDIT moves with the pattern rather than with the person, so a score taken now and a score taken after three months of a different routine are comparable in a way that a memory is not. Questions 4 to 8 ask about the last year, so give a real change a few months before you retake it.
Someone who was asked about it once and shrugged it off
Question 10 is about exactly that: whether a relative, a friend or a doctor has raised your drinking or suggested you cut down. It is in the test because it predicts, and answering it on your own, with nobody in the room, is a different exercise from answering it out loud.
Frequently asked questions
Does a score of 8 or more mean I am an alcoholic?
No. Eight is the score the World Health Organization manual gives as an indicator of hazardous and harmful drinking, and hazardous has a narrow meaning: a pattern that raises the risk of harm, whether or not any harm has happened. That is a reason to look, not a finding, and dependence is a separate clinical category that ten questions cannot establish. The manual is explicit about how movable the line is: it publishes 10 for greater specificity, and 7 for all women and for anyone over 65, and it notes that the right cutoff varies with a country's drinking patterns and with the size of a standard drink there. What a high score does say is worth taking seriously anyway. It is just not a diagnosis, and only a professional evaluation can produce one.
Does the World Health Organization endorse NOESIS?
No, and it is worth stating plainly. The World Health Organization granted NOESIS written permission to reproduce the AUDIT on this platform, under Permission Request No. MRR-048859. Permission to use an instrument is not approval of the platform that uses it. The World Health Organization does not endorse, sponsor, certify or recommend NOESIS, its reports or its other tests, and it has not reviewed any of them. What comes from the World Health Organization is the questionnaire, its scoring rule and its risk zones. Everything else on this page is ours.
Which of these six languages is the World Health Organization's text, and which is yours?
Two of the six are theirs and four are ours. English and Spanish are the questionnaires the World Health Organization published itself, reproduced word for word. Portuguese, Italian, French and German are NOESIS translations of the English original. The World Health Organization did not write those four, did not review them and did not approve them, and it takes no responsibility for their accuracy. The English version is the authentic text, which is what settles any difference between languages. We say the same thing on the instruction screen before you start and in the copyright notice beside the questionnaire, because a translation nobody authenticated should not be able to pass for one that was.
Why are the French and German versions yours and not the World Health Organization's?
Because we asked for theirs and were told to write our own. Annex C of the WHO manual states that French and German versions of the AUDIT exist and are supplied on written request to the department that held them, and the permission we operate under requires the official translation to be used as published wherever one exists. So we wrote and asked. The answer, which forms part of that same permission, is that WHO will not supply the pending versions and that we may use translations prepared by NOESIS, provided they are clearly identified as NOESIS translations and are never presented as official WHO translations or as translations reviewed, approved or endorsed by WHO. English remains the authentic source text. If WHO later identifies an official French or German version, ours is replaced by it.
Question 3 asks about six or more drinks. Six of what?
Of a standard drink, which is roughly 10 grams of pure alcohol in most European definitions and 14 in the United States. That is close to a 330 ml beer at 4 percent, a 100 ml glass of wine, or a 30 ml measure of spirits. The manual allows the number in question 3 to be lowered to four or five in countries where a standard drink is larger, and we deliberately did not do that: a single web questionnaire is answered from every country at once, so there is no local standard to adapt to, and changing the number would change the score for everyone who does not live in the country we picked. It stays as published. If your usual drinks are stronger or larger than a standard drink, count them as more than one.
Who can see my results?
This test is flagged as sensitive in NOESIS. Your results belong to you. If you ever take it inside a corporate program, individual results of sensitive tests are never shown to your employer without your explicit per-test consent, which defaults to off. That is a platform rule, not a courtesy. An alcohol screening result is also the last thing that belongs in a hiring decision, which is why this test is marked unsuitable for recruitment.
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The Complete costs $9.90, if and when you want it.
This test is a self-knowledge tool for informational purposes. It does not constitute a psychological or clinical diagnosis and does not replace evaluation by a qualified professional. The report indicates the AI model used in text generation.
The AUDIT is copyright World Health Organization. The items, the scoring and the risk zones are reproduced from AUDIT: The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, Guidelines for Use in Primary Care, second edition, Geneva, World Health Organization, 2001 (WHO/MSD/MSB/01.6a), whose copyright page reserves all rights to the Organization and allows reproduction and translation but not sale or use for commercial purposes. NOESIS reproduces the instrument commercially under written permission from the World Health Organization, Permission Request No. MRR-048859. Languages are not all the same here, and the difference matters. English and Spanish are the versions the World Health Organization itself published, reproduced without modification, including one typographical error present in the published Spanish sheet. Portuguese, Italian, French and German are NOESIS translations of the English original: the World Health Organization did not write them, did not review them and did not approve them, it takes no responsibility for their accuracy, and the English version is the authentic text. Nothing in those four languages is an official World Health Organization translation or a translation it reviewed, approved or endorsed. If the World Health Organization identifies an official version in any of those four languages, that version replaces ours. The World Health Organization does not endorse, sponsor, certify or recommend NOESIS, this platform, its other assessments or its interpretations, and this permission is not an endorsement, certification or accreditation. Results obtained here are not a clinical diagnosis and do not replace assessment by a professional.