Psychometric properties of the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) with psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents

A sample of 119 consecutively hospitalized adolescents, including 32 sexually abused teenagers, was assessed with the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC). Participants also completed the Beck Depression Inventory, Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), Adolescent-Dissociative Experience Scale, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), Rorschach, and the Family Environment Scale. The reliability and validity of each of the six TSCC scales and four subscales was determined. Analyses suggest that the individual scales are reliable and significantly intercorrelated. Independent measures of depression, anxiety, anger, and dissociation typically correlated significantly with the reference TSCC scales, and in fact, the Posttraumatic Stress subscale significantly discriminated the sexually abused group from the remainder of the sample. These findings suggested that with a psychiatric sample, the TSCC is a valid measure of distress.