Validation of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form in Chile

Background: Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) is an instrument to assess child abuse and neglect Aim: to adapt and confirm the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the CTQ-SF in Chile. Material and Methods: The CTQ-SF was applied to 89 clinically depressed subjects (77.5% women) who consulted at an outpatient mental health clinic. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), reliability (Cronbach's alpha) tests, and convergent validity analyses with clinical markers of complex depression were carried out. Results: The Chilean version of the CTQ-SF demonstrated an acceptable fit to a five factormodel, with adequate psychometric properties. The CFA revealed that a better fit to a five factormodel would be achieved after elimination of two items from the physical neglect scale, the less reliable scale of the questionnaire. The physical abuse scale discriminated between patients with a complex depression versus non-complex depression, and all the CTQ-SF's scales discriminated between patients with high suicide risk and/or history of psychiatric admissions versus those patients without this background. Conclusions: the Chilean version of the CTQ-SF shows evidence of structural and discriminant validity, and reliability, in a clinical sample. Better alternatives to specifically assess the physical neglect construct should be developed.