Development and Validation of a Brief Screening Version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire

Overview

Journal Child Abuse Negl

Specialty Pediatrics

Date 2003 Mar 5

PMID 12615092

Citations 1937

Authors

David P Bernstein

Judith A Stein

Michael D Newcomb

Edward Walker

David Pogge

Taruna Ahluvalia

John Stokes

Leonard Handelsman

Martha Medrano

David Desmond

William Zule

Affiliations

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Abstract

Objective: The goal of this study was to develop and validate a short form of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (the CTQ-SF) as a screening measure for maltreatment histories in both clinical and nonreferred groups.

Method: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the 70 original CTQ items were used to create a 28-item version of the scale (25 clinical items and three validity items) and test the measurement invariance of the 25 clinical items across four samples: 378 adult substance abusing patients from New York City, 396 adolescent psychiatric inpatients, 625 substance abusing individuals from southwest Texas, and 579 individuals from a normative community sample (combined N=1978).

Results: Results showed that the CTQ-SF's items held essentially the same meaning across all four samples (i.e., measurement invariance). Moreover, the scale demonstrated good criterion-related validity in a subsample of adolescents on whom corroborative data were available.

Conclusions: These findings support the viability of the CTQ-SF across diverse clinical and nonreferred populations.

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