Systematic review and critical appraisal of Childhood Trauma Questionnaire - Short Form (CTQ-SF)

Sylvia Georgieva; Jose M Tomas; José Javier Navarro-Pérez

doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105223

Systematic review and critical appraisal of Childhood Trauma Questionnaire - Short Form (CTQ-SF)

Child Abuse Negl. 2021 Oct:120:105223. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105223. Epub 2021 Aug 2.

Authors

Sylvia Georgieva¹, Jose M Tomas², José Javier Navarro-Pérez³

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, Valencia 46010, Spain. Electronic address: sylvia.georgieva@uv.es.
² Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, Valencia 46010, Spain. Electronic address: tomasjm@uv.es.
³ Faculty of Social Work, University of Valencia, Av. Dels Tarongers, 4b, Valencia 46022, Spain. Electronic address: j.javier.navarro@uv.es.

PMID: 34352686
DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105223

Abstract

Background: Child maltreatment is a complex and multidimensional construct that encompasses a great number of risk factors. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire - Short Form, one of the most widely used and validated instruments to assess childhood maltreatment in the past ten years, is a retrospective instrument that assesses several types of childhood abuse and maltreatment which is divided into five dimensions.

Objective: The objectives of this systematic review are to critically appraise, compare, and summarize the methodological quality and psychometric properties of published research articles validating the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire - Short Form utilizing the COSMIN checklist.

Method: Articles published in English or Spanish, in the past ten years in the databases of Scopus, Web of Science, and ProQuest, and which, directly or indirectly analyzed psychometric properties of the CTQ-SF were screened, examined, and assessed utilizing the COSMIN checklist.

Results: Main results indicate that there is a general pattern of assessing the same three psychometric properties (internal consistency, structural validity, and hypothesis testing) in a variety of samples, but leaving unassessed the rest of properties examined by the COSMIN checklist. Additionally, there are some problems with the internal consistency of several factors.

Implications and conclusions: While replicability and internal consistency are good psychometric indicators of the CTQ-SF, there is a big scientific gap of information regarding some psychometric properties. It is suggested that future research should address the remaining psychometric properties, reliability, measurement error, content validity, cross cultural and criterion validity, as well as re-examining internal consistency of some dimensions, in order to advance in the knowledge on childhood maltreatment assessment.

Keywords: Assessment; CTQ-SF; Childhood maltreatment; Psychometric properties; Strength of evidence.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Systematic Review

MeSH terms

Adverse Childhood Experiences*
Child
Humans
Psychometrics
Reproducibility of Results
Retrospective Studies
Surveys and Questionnaires