Childhood trauma questionnaire – short form (CTQ-SF)

The CTQ-SF measures self-reported sexual abuse and other forms of abuse and neglect in childhood [48]. Twenty-eight items are answered on a five-point Likert scale ranging from (1) never true to (5) very often true. Five subscales measure emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect. For the current study, the subscale on childhood sexual abuse was the primary outcome measure, while the other subscales were of secondary interest. Higher sum scores on each scale represent higher severity of abuse. The CTQ previously showed convergent validity with therapist ratings, good test-retest reliability (ranging from .79 to .84) and internal consistency coefficients between α = .66 and .92 [48]. Good psychometric properties were also found for the short form [49, 50]. In the current study, internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) was very good (sexual abuse subscale: α = .937; emotional abuse: α = .873, physical abuse: α = 943; emotional neglect: α = .953) except for physical neglect (α = .597). Combining the two subscales on emotional and physical neglect improved internal consistency in our sample (α = .912).