A Brief Instrument for the Assessment of Childhood Abuse and Neglect: the Childhood Trauma Screener (CTS)

Objective: There is a lack of a psychometrically sound screening questionnaire that assesses important dimensions of traumatic experiences during childhood and adolescence in a time-efficient way. Based on the German version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ, 28 items) we developed a five-item self-report childhood trauma screener (CTS) that covers sexual, emotional and physical abuse and emotional and physical neglect. Method: The data set of the SHIP-LEGEND study (n=1668) was used to extract five items of the CTQ that optimally covered the five dimensions and showed a high correlation with the total score. In two validation samples (clinical sample [n=211] and subjects from the BiDirect study [n=288]) the psychometric properties of the CTS were evaluated. Results: The correlations between the five CTS Items and the corresponding dimensions from the CTQ were r=0.55 to 0.87 (p<0.0001) within the clinical sample. Furthermore, we found high correlations (r=0.88; p<0.0001) with the total CTQ score. The internal consistency was 0.757 (Cronbachs alpha). Conclusion: The CTS is a reliable, valid and economic screener for the retrospective assessment of adverse childhood experiences especially in large epidemiological studies.