Citation

Ehring T, Kleim B, Clark DM, Foa EB, Ehlers A. J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. 2007; 195(12): 1004-1012.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, United Kingdom. t.w.a.ehring@uva.nl

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1097/NMD.0b013e31815c1999

PMID

18091194

Abstract

Several symptom screening instruments have been developed to identify trauma survivors at risk for chronic posttraumatic stress disorder, but few of these have been thoroughly evaluated to date. In this study, a range of symptom combination scoring rules derived from the literature were applied to the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale and evaluated in 4 different samples of trauma survivors (total N = 522) regarding their power to identify people with posttraumatic stress disorder. Results were replicated in a fifth sample (N = 253). Most scoring rules showed lower diagnostic efficiencies than in the original reports. The most stable results were obtained for cutoffs on the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale total scale and a new subset of 8 items. The results underscore the need to cross-validate findings before using screening instruments for clinical applications.

Language: en