Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) in Brazilian samples of different age groups: findings from confirmatory factor analysis

PLoS One. 2014 Jan 27;9(1):e87118. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0087118. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) is internationally accepted as a key tool for the assessment of childhood abuse and neglect experiences. However, there are relative few psychometric studies available and some authors have proposed two different factor solutions. We examined the dimensional structure and internal consistency of the Brazilian version of the CTQ. A total of 1,925 participants from eight different clinical and non-clinical samples including adolescents, adults and elders were considered in this study. First, we performed Confirmatory Factor Analysis to investigate the goodness of fit of the two proposed competitive factor structure models for the CTQ. We also investigated the internal consistency of all factors. Second, multi-group analyses were used to investigate measurement invariance and population heterogeneity across age groups and sex. Our findings revealed that the alternative factor structure as opposed to the original factor structure was the most appropriate model within adolescents and adults Brazilian samples. We provide further evidence for the validity and reliability of the CTQ within the Brazilian samples and report that the alternative model showed an improvement in fit indexes and may be a better alternative over the original model.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Validation Study

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Age Factors
  • Brazil / epidemiology
  • Child
  • Child Abuse / statistics & numerical data*
  • Factor Analysis, Statistical
  • Humans
  • Middle Aged
  • Sex Factors
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Wounds and Injuries / epidemiology*

Grants and funding

This research was supported by CAPES Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.