Studying the Long-Term Effects of Sexual Abuse: The Trauma Sympton Checklist (TSC) Scales (From Rape and Sexual Assault III, P 57-74, 1991, Wolbert Burgess, ed. -- See NCJ-134540)

• NCJ Number: 134544
• Author(s): D M Elliott; J Briere
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Garland Publishing, Inc.
• Publication Type: Measurement/Evaluation Device
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

This study examined the effectiveness of the Trauma Sympton Checklist 33 (TSC-33) and the Trauma Symptom Checklist 40 (TSC-40), both of which were designed to be brief, abuse-oriented instruments that can be used in clinical research as measures of traumatic impact, most notably in the area of long-term child abuse effects.

Abstract

This paper reports on the psychometric characteristics of the TSC-33 in a clinical sample of 195 adult women (Briere and Runtz, 1989) and the TSC-40 in a large, nonclinical sample of professional women (Elliott and Briere, 1990). Data are also presented from six other studies that used the TSC scales to indicate a history of sexual abuse or to correlate specific characteristics of sexual abuse with adult symptomatology. Some subjects in both the clinical and nonclinical groups reported low levels of symptomatology despite having been sexually abused as a child; whereas, other subjects were more highly symptomatic but denied a sexual abuse history. In both clinical and nonclinical samples, TSC scores apparently increased in the presence of both physical and sexual abuse; this suggests that scores on this instrument may be elevated by various forms of victimization. These findings suggest that the TSC's are responsive to a variety of traumatic life experiences, only one of which is sexual abuse. Such variability should be investigated in future studies. 5 tables and 33 references