Evaluation of the Validity and Reliability of the Trauma History Questionnaire in Non-Psychotic Psychiatric Patients

THQ is one of the key tools for psychiatrists to diagnose and study the PTSD. Unfortunately, there is no standard sample of it in Persian, so the aim of this study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Trauma History Questionnaire in non-psychotic psychiatric patients.

This was a cross-sectional study. The final Persian translation of THQ was given to 5 psychiatrists and psychologists to evaluate the reliability and content validity of each item of the questionnaire and then according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, eligible patients were included in the study. Fifty non-psychotic psychiatric patients were used to determine the construct validity between THQ and SLESQ questionnaires. They also completed the PCL and DASS checklists.

According to the findings of present study, it was seen a significant correlation between THQ and SLESQ. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the whole questionnaire was 0.704. Regarding the answer to the questions, the experience of each type of trauma in 23 cases, the kappa statistics showed excellent reliability (above 0.6) and in 10 cases showed complete correlation of test and retest answers. Reliability was not very good for the experience of natural disasters (κ = 0.540). To evaluate the heuristic factor structure, the value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin index was sufficient for the adequacy of sample size 0.617 and Bertlett's sphericity test was statistically significant.

The results of this study showed that THQ has good validity, retest reliability and internal stability and its factor structure was satisfactory.