Transcultural Arabic validation of the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5, Child and Adolescent version

Posttraumatic stress disorder PTSD in the pediatric population has clinical features. The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5,child and adolescent version (CAPS-CA-5) is the gold standard in positive diagnosis. Our study had two primary objectives, first, to translate the CAPS-CA-5 into Tunisian dialectal Arabic, and second, to validate the translated version within the Tunisian sociocultural context.

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in two hospital departments. We recruited children older than seven years who were exposed to a potentially traumatic event at least one month before. We validated the tool through translation, content, construct validity and reliability.

The validation was made on 146 records after the exclusion of 4 incompleted assessments. We initially translated the CAPS-CA-5 into Tunisian dialect. We validated the content through pre-test and scientific committee evaluation. Afterwards we validated the construction. We calculated the Bartlett's sphericity test (p<0.001) and the KMO index that was 0.766. Concerning the reliability study, we found a Cronbach's alpha coefficient equal to 0.92. We studied the inter-rater reliability via the intra-class coefficient which was between 0.8 and 1.  Conclusion:  We validated the CAPS CA5 in our cultural context with satisfactory psychometric qualities. This tool will facilitate the early detection and diagnosis of PTSD in pediatric population.