Abstract
The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form is the most widely used instrument to assess childhood trauma and has been translated into 10 languages. However, research into validity and reliability of these translated versions is scarce. The present study aimed to investigate the factor structure, internal consistency, reliability, and known-groups validity of the German Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (Bernstein & Fink, 1998). Six-hundred and sixty-one clinical and nonclinical participants completed the German Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the 5-factor structure of the original Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form. To investigate known-groups validity, the confirmatory factor analysis latent factor levels between clinical and nonclinical participants were compared. The original 5-factor structure was confirmed, with only the Physical Neglect scale showing rather poor fit. As a conclusion, the results support the validity and reliability of the German Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form. It is recommended to use the German Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form to assess experiences of childhood trauma.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 418-430 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Journal of Child Sexual Abuse |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 18 Mar 2014 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 12 May 2014 |
Keywords
- Adult
- Adult Survivors of Child Abuse/psychology
- Child
- Child Abuse/diagnosis
- Female
- Humans
- Inpatients/statistics & numerical data
- Mass Screening/methods
- Middle Aged
- Principal Component Analysis
- Psychometrics
- Reproducibility of Results
- Severity of Illness Index
- Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/diagnosis
- Surveys and Questionnaires/standards
- Switzerland
