Construction and Standardization of a Psychological Scale for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for adolescents and adults

Abstract

The current study aims to construct and standardize a psychological scale for post-traumatic stress disorder for adolescents and adults, to contribute to the accuracy of the diagnosing of the cases in which the symptoms of their disorders overlap, which makes it difficult to diagnose accurately and therefore has negative effects in the  treatment and psychological interventions, This study is based on the descriptive Correlational research methodology where the study sample consisted of (1881) subjects of which 1321 subjects were male whereas 560 subjects were female.

The subjects of this study were intentionally chosen from specialty clinics, hospitals, treatment centers, and from among the Paramedics of Civil Defense Department in Amman, Jordan, the scale was constructed based on the fifth Diagnostic Statistic Manual (DSM-5, 2013), following the verification of the validity and the reliability. The results of the study also showed that the matching of the difficulty level of the items were suitable for the items and fall within the acceptable level of the coefficients of difficulty, as they indicated the gradation in the difficulty of the items of the scale, and that they have appropriate coefficients of difficulty and the matching values of the items reflect appropriate matching, The findings also revealed that the performance of individuals on the scale is relatively stable, and also The statistical procedures proved the high values of the psychometric properties of the scale.

Finally, this research study pointed to some recommendations of which adoptive. The scale as a diagnostic test for the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the mental health clinics and centers, as another recommendation was to conduct more research using the scale different age groups.