A method to assess the severity of alcohol dependence by rating patient records was developed using the items of the 'alcohol abuse' subscale of the Swedish version of the Alcohol Use Inventory (AVI). The records of 37 alcoholics were rated and the scores were compared with the patients' self-report scores of the AVI and clinical assessments based on the structured clinical interview for DSM-III-R (SCID). The inter-rater reliability was rs = 0.88. The correlations between the record ratings and the alcoholics' self-ratings were rs = 0.77 for both raters and 0.55-0.57 between the record ratings and the total SCID-scores. The correlations between the self-ratings and SCID-scores were rs = 0.90. It is suggested that this method may facilitate record-based follow-up studies of alcoholics.