Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children--Short Form

The assessment of developmental trauma in children and adolescents: A systematic review

“…A total of 11 measures were identified which assessed trauma symptomology outside, or in addition to, PTSD diagnostic criteria (Tables 5 and 6). Of these, nine were validated for children (Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSCYC; Gilbert, 2004; Pollio, Glover-Orr, & Wherry, 2008; Wherry, Graves, & King, 2008), TSCYC - Short Form (TSCYC-SF; Wherry, Corson & Hunsaker, 2013), Assessment Checklist for Children (ACC; Tarren-Sweeney, 2007), Brief Assessment Checklist for Children (BAC-C; Tarren-Sweeney, 2013b), Trauma Assessment for Young Children (TAYC; Strickler, 2011), Child Paediatric Emotional Distress Scale (Saylor, Cupit, Reynolds & Taylor, 1999), Story Stem Assessment Profile (Hodges, Steele, Kaniuk, Hillman, and Asquith, 2009), Trauma Play Scale (Findling, Bratton & Henson, 2006; Myers, Bratton, Hagen, & Findling, 2011) and Dominic Interactive Assessment (de la Osa, Ezpeleta, Granero, Olaya, & Domenech, 2011)) and two for adolescents (Assessment Checklist for Adolescents (ACA; Tarren-Sweeney, 2013a) and Brief Assessment Checklist for Adolescents (BAC-A; Tarren-Sweeney, 2013b)). None were developed or validated for use across the age range.…”

“…A selection of studies made comparisons against general measures of emotional and behavioural functioning such as the Revised Problem Behaviour Checklist (Spilsbury et al, 2005) or the CBCL (Strickler, 2011). While several studies reported correlations to the CBCL measure as evidence of convergent validity (de la Osa et al, 2011; Tarren-Sweeney, 2007, 2013a, 2013b; Wherry et al, 2013; Wherry et al, 2008), one study argued that a low correlation to the externalising scale of the CBCL demonstrated evidence of discriminant validity in their measure (TAYC; Strickler, 2011).…”

“…Other studies restricted their investigations to samples with experience of one type of adversity and at times, details about the type, severity, and chronicity were absent. The TSCYC (Gilbert, 2004; Pollio et al, 2008; Wherry et al, 2013; Wherry et al, 2008) demonstrated psychometric strengths but has largely been studied within a sexual abuse population. The TAYC (Strickler, 2011) benefits from a self-report format and the authors’ consideration of complex trauma and age-appropriate cognitive and social skills in its development.…”

“…Only two studies reported test-retest reliability for the measures (Myers et al 2011;Strickler, 2011) with good results, although Strickler's investigation of the TAYC was based solely on the non-clinical sample. Evidence of convergent validity was reported against other known PTSD measures such as the UCLA-PTSD-RI (Wherry et al, 2013;Wherry et al, 2008), or the PTSD Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents Scale (DICA; Pollio et al, 2008). A measure of sexual behaviour (CSBI; Baker et al, 2008) was also used to establish the validity of the sexual behaviour subscale of the TSCYC (Wherry et al, 2008).…”

“…Trauma/adversity type. Most commonly, measures were evaluated against samples of participants who had experienced one type of adversity, for example, all studies on the TSCYC, including those on the short-form of the measure, utilised participants who had been exposed to sexual abuse (Gilbert, 2004;Pollio et al, 2008;Wherry et al, 2013;Wherry et al, 2008). Failure to document the presence of other forms of adversity and/or whether trauma was single-event or ongoing was common across studies.…”