The 11-item Traumatic Events Questionnaire (TEQ) assesses 9
events such as experiencing a serious accident (industrial, farm or
car), receiving news of serious injury or death of someone, and
being a victim of physical or sexual abuse. It also allows for an
unspecified traumatic event to be examined. For each event
endorsed, respondents are asked to provide the frequency, age at
the time(s) of the event, degree of injury, degree of life threat,
degree of how traumatizing the event was at the time, and degree of
how traumatizing the event is currently. A 7-point scale
(1=“not at all” to 7=“extremely”) is used
for each of the degree questions. The TEQ is suitable for research
and clinical purposes.
Sample Item
Have you witnessed someone who was mutilated,
seriously inured, or violently killed? (How many times? How old
were you at the time? Were you injured? Did you feel your life was
threatened? How traumatic was this for you at that time? How
traumatic is this for you now?).
Versions
The military version includes 3 additional items
that examines serving in a war zone (e.g., being a Prisoner of War
and observing or participating in atrocities).
References
Vrana, S. R. & Lauterbach, D. (1994). Prevalence of
traumatic events and post-traumatic psychological symptoms in a
nonclinical sample of college students. Journal of Traumatic
Stress, 7, 289-302.
Orsillo, Susan M. (2001). Measures for acute stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. In M.M. Antony & S.M. Orsillo (Eds.), Practitioner's guide to empirically based measures of anxiety (pp. 255-307). New York: KluwerAcademic/Plenum. PILOTS ID 24368
Norris, Fran H. & Hamblen, Jessica L. (2004). Standardized self-report measures of civilian trauma and PTSD. In J.P. Wilson, T.M. Keane & T. Martin (Eds.), Assessing psychological trauma and PTSD (pp. 63-102). New York: Guilford Press. PILOTS ID 18638
To obtain scale, contact
Scott Vrana, PhD
Dept. of Psychology
Virginia Commonwealth University
Natchitoches, LA 71457
email: srvrana@saturn.vcu.edu
