Psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire—Short Form (CTQ-SF)

Abstract

Childhood maltreatment is delicate to assess both in clinical work and in research. There is a need for assessment tools that can be easily administered in an ethical and non-intrusive way that meets requirements of conceptual validity for various types of maltreatment and is sensitive to levels of severity. This study explores the psychometric properties of the Swedish translation of one such tool-the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF; Bernstein and Fink, 1998). The CTQ-SF was administered to seven samples (total n=659)-five clinical samples and two non-clinical student samples. The factor structure supports the construct validity of the global maltreatment scale, four of the five maltreatment subscales (emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse and emotional neglect) and the minimization/denial (MD) scale, but not the physical neglect (PN) subscale. All items are highly correlated with their respective subscale. The discriminant validity is satisfactory. Highly significant correlation with social desirability gives further support for the MD-scale and to the recommendation of how to apply it. Internal consistency of PN is acceptable and for all other scales satisfactory. Swedish norm groups tend to score lower than similar American norm groups on abuse scales but higher on the neglect scales. Percentiles for seven gender-specific norm groups are presented. The weaknesses of the PN-scale are discussed and new constructs are proposed. The Swedish version of the CTQ-SF has the same construct validity and internal consistency as the original, including less homogeneity of the PN scale.

Childhood trauma in adults with social anxiety disorder and panic disorder: a cross-national study

“…32 The Cronbach alpha of the 5th subscale assessing physical neglect was, however, below both these cutoffs, suggesting that the items comprising this subscale may be multidimensional or not highly correlated with one another. Interestingly, there seems to be agreement across many CTQ studies that the physical neglect subscale has limited reliability, is not homogenous, and that its items may be variably interpreted 33 i.e. characteristics that may have biased our findings to some extent.…”

The Impact of Childhood Maltreatment on Age of Onset of Alcohol Use Disorder in Women

“…Each subscale has a score that ranges from 5 to 25, whereby higher scores indicate greater severity of abuse or neglect. The Cronbach's alpha in the Swedish version is 0.92 for the global maltreatment scale and > 0.86 for all subscales except for physical neglect (0.65) [11]. The validity of the global maltreatment scale and four of the five maltreatment subscales is satisfactory, whereas the subscale on physical neglect is non-homogenous.…”

“…Five distinguishable manifestations of childhood maltreatment are generally recognised; these include emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect and physical neglect [1,11]. Previous studies of pa-tients with AUD have mostly focused on sexual and physical abuse [2,4,7,[12][13][14][15].…”

Estudo de propriedades psicométricas do Questionário de Trauma de Infância – Versão breve numa amostra portuguesa não clínica

“…O índice de negação é avaliado pela existência de respostas extremas aos itens 10, 16 e 22, os quais refletem a existência de uma infância perfeita. O índice de negação, obtido pela soma de um ponto por cada resposta "sempre" nos itens indicados, é usada para avaliar questões relacionadas com a desejabilidade social ou tendência para negar experiências negativas ocorridas durante a infância (Gerdner & Allgulander, 2009). O nosso estudo não incluiu a análise do índice de negação.…”