Psychometric evaluation of the children's impact of traumatic events scale-revised

Objective: To measure the internal consistency and construct validity of the Children's Impact of Traumatic Events Scale-Revised (CITES-R). Method: 158 sexually abused children, ages 7-12, and a nonabusive parent or primary caretaker completed a series of measures, including the CITES-R. A subsample of 17 repeated the assessment after 1 to 2 months with intervening treatment. Results: Internal consistency for the CITES-R scales averaged .69. Associations with other measures were in predicted directions, although most were modest in size. Parent-report measures were virtually unrelated to any child-report measure, including the CITES-R. Change over time during treatment was noted on most symptom scales. Conclusions: The psychometric adequacy of the CITES-R was moderately supported. The main symptom scales of the instrument performed well. The performance of other scales was more variable. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.