Psychometric properties of childhood experiences questionnaire (CEQ-58) used to assess the intensity of traumatic experiences from childhood and adolescence – preliminary elaboration

Purpose
It has been shown that childhood trauma is associated with many negative outcomes in adulthood. Unfortunately, there is no psychometrically sound and readily available tool that can be used in Poland to measure this variable. The purpose of this work was to create and determine psychometric parameters of a newly developed Childhood Experiences Questionnaire (CEQ-58) to measure the intensity of traumatic events in childhood.

Methods
Initially the questionnaire consisted of 120 items. The pilot study involved 50 participants. Based on the results of this preliminary study, the most reliable items were chosen. The final version of the questionnaire consisted of 58 items and 7 subscales. The participants in the second study were 30 people diagnosed with schizophrenia and 30 people from a healthy control group who filled in the CEQ-58, Childhood Questionnaire and Global Assessment of Functioning Questionnaire.

Results
The reliability of the CEQ-58 questionnaire measured by Cronbach’s α coefficient was 0.92. For six of the seven subscales this coefficient ranged from 0.77 to 0.92. Only for the “environmental instability” subscale did it reach 0.54. CEQ-58 strongly and negatively correlated with a shortened version of the Childhood Questionnaire and moderately and positively correlated with the Global Assessment of Functioning Questionnaire. Moreover, statistical analyses revealed that the intensity of traumatic events among people diagnosed with schizophrenia was significantly higher than in healthy subjects (d = 0.92).

Conclusions
The results of the study indicate satisfactory reliability and validity of CEQ-58. The limitations of the project are the quantity and the composition of the research sample.