Initial Psychometric Properties of a Brief Parent-Report Instrument for Assessing Tic Severity in Children with Chronic Tic Disorders

This article describes the development and initial psychometric properties of the Parent Tic Questionnaire (PTQ)-a new measure assessing the number, frequency, and intensity of motor and vocal tics in children and adolescents with Chronic Tic Disorder (CTD). Parents of 40 children with a CTD completed the PTQ as part of a larger assessment battery. Results show the PTQ to have excellent internal consistency and good to excellent 2-week test-retest reliability . The motor tic severity subscale, vocal tic severity subscale, and total severity score of the PTQ correlated highly with the corresponding scales of the gold-standard clinician-rated Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS), indicating excellent convergent validity. Correlations between the YGTSS and PTQ remained strong after controlling for measures of obsessive-compulsive disorder and inattention, suggesting good discriminant validity. The PTQ is a promising supplement to current methods for assessing tic severity and further research on the validity, reliability, and clinical utility of the scale are warranted.