The Child PTSD Symptom Scale: A Preliminary Examination of its Psychometric Properties

• Published in: Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology Vol. 30; no. 3; pp. 376 - 384
• Main Authors: Foa, Edna B., Johnson, Kelly M., Feeny, Norah C., Treadwell, Kimberli R. H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc 01.09.2001; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior - psychology; Child; Child psychology; Children; Children & youth; Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV; Discriminant validity; Female; Humans; Male; Post traumatic stress disorder; Posttraumatic stress disorder; Psychological measurement; Psychometric properties; Psychometrics - statistics & numerical data; Reproducibility of Results; Severity of Illness Index; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - diagnosis; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - psychology; Surveys and Questionnaires; Symptoms
• ISSN: 1537-4416; 0047-228X; 1537-4424
• DOI: 10.1207/S15374424JCCP3003_9

Reports on the development and preliminary validation of the Child PTSD Symptom Scale (CPSS) for children and adolescents. The CPSS is a new instrument that was developed to assess the severity of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in children exposed to trauma. The CPSS was administered to 75 school-age children approximately 2 years after the 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake. The psychometric properties of the CPSS show high internal consistency and test-retest reliability for both the total score and the three subscales. Convergent validity with the Child Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index (CPTSD-RI) was established. As expected, the correlations of the CPSS with depression and anxiety measures were lower than those with the CPTSD-RI, providing some support for discriminant validity of the CPSS. These results suggest that the CPSS is a useful tool for the assessment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity and for the screening of PTSD diagnosis among traumatized children.