Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ)

The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire was developed as a screening tool for histories of abut and neglect. The self-report includes a 28-item test that measures 5 types of maltreatment – emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and emotional and physical neglect. Common uses for the CTQ are formulating treatment plans, conducting child custody investigations, and assessing special populations. Approximately 5 minutes is required to complete the test. A 5-point Likert scale is used for the responses which range from Never True to Very Often True.

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Authors

David P. Bernstein & Laura Fink, 1997.

Reliability and Validity

Reliability for the CTQ is good with high internal consistency scores. Sexual Abuse, Emotional Neglect, Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse have reported coefficients of .93-.95, .88-92, .84-.89, and .81-.86, respectively. Over a 3 ½ month period, the test-retest coefficient was calculated at close to 0.80. Factor analysis tests on the five-factor CTQ model showed structural invariance which demonstrate good validity.

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Administration, Analysis and Reporting

Statistics Solutions consists of a team of professional methodologists and statisticians that can assist the student or professional researcher in administering the survey instrument, collecting the data, conducting the analyses and explaining the results.

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Dissertations Using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire

Below is a list of published dissertations that use the CTQ.  The full versions of these dissertations can be found on ProQuest.

Adams, S. M. (2007). Retention of previously incarcerated women in a community-based residential substance abuse treatment program. University of Kentucky).

References

Bernstein, D. P., Fink, L., Handelsman, L., & Foote, J. (1994). Initial reliability and validity of a new retrospective measure of child abuse and neglect. American Journal of Psychiatry, 151 (8), 1132-1136.

Fink, L. A., Bernstein, D., Handelsman, L., Foote, J., & Lovejoy, M. (1995). Initial reliability and validity of the Childhood Trauma Interview: A new multidimensional measure of childhood interpersonal trauma. American Journal of Psychiatry, 152 (9), 1329-1335.

Bernstein, D. P., Ahluvalia, T., Pogge, D., Handelsman, L. (1997). Validity of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in an adolescent psychiatric population. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 36 (3), 340-348.