Shevlin, Mark;
Hyland, Philip;
Brewin, Chris R;
Cloitre, Marylene;
Karatzias, Thanos;
Redican, Enya;
(2025)
Testing the Use of "Clinical Checks" With the International Trauma Questionnaire to Measure PTSD and Complex PTSD.
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica
10.1111/acps.13799.
(In press).
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: The International Trauma Questionnaire (ITQ) is the most widely used measure of ICD-11 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Complex PTSD (CPTSD). This self-report scale has been used to estimate prevalence rates of these disorders in general populations and clinical samples, but concerns abound that prevalence estimates derived from self-report measures are too high. To address this concern, we previously introduced the concept of adding "clinical checks" to self-report measures to ensure initial responses reflected the intended clinical meaning of the scale item. Here we provide a rationale for adding clinical checks to the ITQ, describe the process of developing them, and demonstrate their effect at the symptom, cluster, and disorder levels in a general population sample. METHODS: A team of researchers and clinicians, including those who developed the ITQ, developed clinical checks for all ITQ items. These were tested using data from a non-probability quota-based representative sample of adults from the United Kingdom (N = 975). RESULTS: Use of clinical checks led to decreases in symptom endorsements ranging from 18.0% to 43.9%, and symptom cluster requirements from 19.1% to 35.9%. Disorder prevalence estimates without the clinical checks were 5.4% for PTSD and 9.5% for CPTSD. With the clinical checks, prevalence estimates dropped to 3.8% for PTSD (relative decrease = 29.6%) and 4.9% for CPTSD (relative decrease = 48.4%). CONCLUSION: Clinical checks can be easily embedded into the ITQ and have a significant effect on prevalence estimates. We contextualize these results in relation to existing literature on population prevalence estimates derived from clinical interviews and discrepancies between clinical interviews and self-report measures.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Testing the Use of "Clinical Checks" With the International Trauma Questionnaire to Measure PTSD and Complex PTSD |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/acps.13799 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/acps.13799 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | CPTSD, ICD‐11, PTSD, diagnosis |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10206902 |
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