Psychometric Evaluation of the Caregiver Version of the Child PTSD Symptom Scale in a Recently Immigrated, Spanish Speaking Population

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a large increase in the number of youth and families emigrating from Central America to the United States to escape extreme violence and crime victimization. As a result, the rate of trauma-exposure and trauma-related distress among this population is alarmingly high and necessitates representation of this population in psychological research, particularly related to trauma symptom measurement. The broad aim of the current study was to examine the psychometric performance of caregiver-reported data on one such instrument intended to measure youth trauma symptoms. Specifically, we sought to document the psychometric performance of the Child PTSD Symptoms Scale (CPSS) with recently immigrated Spanish-Speaking youth and caregivers from Central America by examining the convergent, divergent, and concurrent validity of the caregiver-report form. Overall, the measure showed psychometric promise as it broadly demonstrated adequate concurrent and convergent. Results also suggested that further research is needed to better understand how to reduce the comorbidity that is often depicted in caregiver reports, which can lead to poor discriminant validity. Regardless, current findings suggest the appropriateness of incorporating caregiver reports of youth trauma in Spanish-speaking, recently immigrated youth.