1. Scoring the Life Events Checklist: Comparison of three scoring methods
- Author
-
Terri A. deRoon-Cassini, E. Kate Webb, Carissa N. Weis, Sarah K. Stevens, and Christine L. Larson
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,Risk predictor ,Social Psychology ,Life span ,business.industry ,Life events ,Scoring methods ,Reproducibility of Results ,PsycINFO ,Article ,Checklist ,Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic ,Clinical Psychology ,Research Design ,Weighted score ,Physical therapy ,Humans ,Medicine ,Self Report ,business ,Reliability (statistics) - Abstract
OBJECTIVE Prior trauma history is a reliable and robust risk predictor for PTSD development. Obtaining an accurate measurement of prior trauma history is critical in research of trauma-related outcomes. The Life Events Checklist (LEC) is a widely used self-report measure of trauma history that categorizes events by the proximity to trauma exposure; however, the field has published multiple scoring methods when assessing the LEC. Herein, we propose a novel scoring procedure in which total scores from the LEC are weighted according to the proximity of trauma exposure with "experienced" events weighted most and "learned about" events weighted least. METHOD The utility of this weighted score was assessed in two traumatically-injured civilian samples and compared against previously published scoring methods, including a nonweighted score including all events experienced, witnessed, and learned about, as well as a score consisting of only experienced events. RESULTS Results indicated the standard total score was most reliable, followed by the weighted score. The experienced events score was least reliable, but the best predictor of future PTSD symptoms. CONCLUSIONS One method to balance the predictive strength of experienced events and the excellent reliability of a total LEC score, is to adopt the newly proposed weighted score. Future use of this weighted scoring method can provide a comprehensive estimate of lifetime trauma exposure while still emphasizing the direct proximity of experienced events compared with other degrees of exposure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
- Published
- 2022