Preliminary study of the Psychometric properties of the Greek version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire - Short Form, among Greek adults

Abstract

Children’s exposure to adverse experiences has increased dramatically, during the last years, amidst financial crisis and Covid-19 pandemic. According to the latest published figures one billion children aged 2-17 years around the globe have experienced any type of violence (physical, sexual, emotional, or multiple types) in the previous year, which will have long-lasting negative effects on their lives. Various studies have presented unquestionable data of the profound impact of childhood maltreatment on many areas of life related to brain development, mental health (depression, anxiety disorders), physical health (obesity, CDVs, somatic symptoms), causing impairment on behavioral, social, and emotional functioning throughout adulthood. The identification of adverse child experiences is of major importance, especially since victims of abuse and neglect do not tend to disclose given experiences, unless they are directly asked about those. The present study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties in the areas of reliability and validity of the Greek version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short- Form (CTQ-SF), which is one of the most widely used screening tool with excellent psychometric properties, worldwide. 254 non-clinical adults participated in the survey, which revealed that the Greek version of the CTQ-SF is of high reliability (Cronbach a of the entire model sum up to .92), while the factorial structure of the original tool presented marginal higher acceptable fit to the data vs. the alternative one. The tool’s convergent validity with the TSC-40 was found to be limited, whereas our hypothesis concerning known group validity was partially validated.