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By Sage de Beixedon Breslin, Ph.D.
While this document is required reading for the course, it is not mandatory to open any of the additional links to access information. These websites and links are provided as resources, and are not required reading for this course.
Trauma Exposure Measures
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/assessment/te-measures/
Thirteen tools for assessing trauma exposure are summarized and compared in a chart.
Combat Exposure Scale
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/assessment/te-measures/ces.asp
For use with those who have provided military service.
Evaluation Of Lifetime Stressors
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/assessment/all_measures.asp
The Evaluation of Lifetime Stressors (ELS) is an assessment protocol for adolescents or adults comprised of a self-report questionnaire and semi-structured interview that examines a range of traumatic experiences across the lifespan. The 56-item questionnaire assesses experiences with disasters, illnesses, accidents, violence, combat, and other traumas by offering 4 response options (“yes, I can remember this,” “I’m not sure if this happened,” “No, but this happened to someone else in my family” and “No, this did not happen”). The 56-item interview is organized into 9 modules (some of which are optional) that examine the non-negative responses on the questionnaire by providing specific probe questions for each item.
The interview provides a way to explore dimensions of each trauma including trauma type, perpetrators/victims, duration, frequency, perceptions of threats and emotional response, and others. A summary of the information can be captured in the Traumatic Events Summary prepared by the interviewer. Finally, an in-depth querying interview is provided to assess the worst two or three events to examine dimensions such as dissociation, disclosure, and treatment. This measure was designed to be sensitive clinically by allowing for vague responses and by introducing less emotionally evocative questions first and is suitable for both research and clinical purposes.
Life Stressor Checklist – Revised (LSC-R)
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/assessment/te-measures/lsc-r.asp
The Life Stressor Checklist-Revised is a self-report measure that assesses traumatic or stressful life events. The measure has a focus on events relevant to women such as abortion. The questionnaire includes 30 life events, including experiences with natural disasters, physical or sexual assault, death of a relative and other events and follows a yes/no format. For endorsed events, respondents are asked to provide: age when event began, age when event ended, belief that they were in harm (“yes” or “no”), feelings of helplessness (“yes” or “no”). In addition, affect on life and how upsetting event was at the time are rated on a 5-point intensity scale (1=”not at all” to 5=”extremely”). Respondents are asked to identify the 3 events that currently have the greatest impact on them. The LSC-R can be used for clinical or research purposes.
Trauma Sequelae And PTSD Measures
Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children™ (TSCC™)
https://www.parinc.com/Products/Pkey/461
The TSCC is a self-report measure of posttraumatic stress and related psychological symptomatology in children ages 8-16 years who have experienced traumatic events (e.g., physical or sexual abuse, major loss, natural disaster, witnessing violence).
Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children™ (TSCYC™)
https://www.parinc.com/Products/Pkey/463
Because exposure to traumatic events (e.g., child abuse, peer assaults, community violence) is an unfortunate part of many children’s lives, psychological tests for trauma effects have become an important part of the child-focused assessment battery. Following the success of the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children™ (TSCC™) in evaluating older children, the TSCYC was developed to be the first fully standardized and normed broadband trauma measure for children as young as 3 years of age.
Tested by clinicians and researchers throughout North America, the TSCYC is a 90-item caretaker-report instrument with separate norms for males and females in three age groups: 3-4 years, 5-9 years, and 10-12 years. Caretakers rate each symptom on a 4-point scale according to how often the symptom has occurred in the previous month. Unlike most other caretaker-report measures, the TSCYC contains specific scales to ascertain the validity of caretaker reports (Response Level and Atypical Response) and provides norm-referenced data on the number of waking hours the caretaker spends with the child in the average week (0-1 hours to Over 60 hours).
The TSCYC contains eight Clinical scales: Anxiety, Depression, Anger/Aggression, Posttraumatic Stress-Intrusion, Posttraumatic Stress-Avoidance, Posttraumatic Stress-Arousal, Dissociation, and Sexual Concerns, as well as a summary posttraumatic stress scale (Posttraumatic Stress-Total). These scales provide a detailed evaluation of posttraumatic stress, as well as information on other symptoms found in many traumatized children. The PTSD Diagnosis Worksheet incorporates information from the TSCYC to assist the user in evaluating PTSD criteria in younger children and provides a possible PTSD diagnosis in children 5 years of age or older (sensitivity = .72, specificity = .75). The TSCYC is appropriate for English-speaking caretakers, including those who have a relatively low reading level (Flesch-Kincaid score = 6.8).
Detailed Assessment of Posttraumatic Stress™ (DAPS™)
https://www.parinc.com/Products/Pkey/80
The DAPS is a 104-item, detailed, and comprehensive clinical measure of trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress in individuals ages 18 years and older who have a history of exposure to one or more potentially traumatic events. The instrument assesses peri- and posttraumatic symptoms (e.g., intrusion, avoidance, hyperarousal) and associated features (e.g., dissociative symptoms, substance abuse, suicidality) related to a specific traumatic event and generates a tentative diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) in considerably less time than is required for a structured diagnostic interview. The diagnosis can then be confirmed by a clinical interview.
The DAPS assesses both current and lifetime history of DSM-IV-TR trauma exposure, as well as the severity and clinical significance of an individual’s posttraumatic symptoms, including dissociative, cognitive, and emotional responses. The DAPS scales include the three PTSD symptom clusters (Reexperiencing, Avoidance, and Hyperarousal) and three associated features of PTSD: Trauma-Specific Dissociation, Suicidality, and Substance Abuse. Two validity scales identify overreporting and underreporting of psychological symptoms.
Multiscale Dissociation Inventory (MDI)
http://s1097954.instanturl.net/multiscale-dissociation-inventory-mdi/
The MDI is a 30-item self-report test of dissociative symptomatology. It is fully standardized and normed, and measures six different type of dissociative response. The scales of the MDI (with their associated alpha reliabilities in the general population) are:
The MDI is normed and standardized on 444 trauma-exposed individuals from the general population, and validated in clinical, community, and university samples. Scores on this measure can be converted to T-scores that allow for empirically-based clinical interpretation of clients’ actual level of dissociative disturbance.
The MDI has been found to have good psychometric qualities in both the normative and validation samples. Data on over 1,300 clinical and nonclinical individuals indicates that the MDI does, in fact, tap relatively independent types of dissociative responses that correlate, as expected, with the MDI scales (Briere, Weathers, & Runtz, 2005). A raw Identity Dissociation scale score of 15 or higher was found to identify 93% of those with diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and 92% of those with no diagnosis of DID in a combined clinical/community sample. Each MDI symptom item is rated according to its frequency of occurrence over the prior month, using a scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often).
The MDI requires approximately 10-15 minutes to complete for all but the most clinically impaired individuals and usually can be scored and profiled in less than 5 minutes.