Overview
Providing a clinical measure of trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress.
Suitable for
18 years and older.
Product Description
The DAPS is a 104-item, detailed, and comprehensive clinical measure of trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress in individuals ages 18 years and older who have a history of exposure to one or more potentially traumatic events. The instrument assesses peri and post-traumatic symptoms (e.g. intrusion, avoidance, hyperarousal) and associated features (e.g. dissociative symptoms, substance abuse, suicidality) related to a specific traumatic event and generates a tentative diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) in considerably less time than is required for a structured diagnostic interview. The diagnosis can then be confirmed by a clinical interview.
The DAPS assesses both current and lifetime history of DSM-IV-TR trauma exposure, as well as the severity and clinical significance of an individual's post-traumatic symptoms, including dissociative, cognitive and emotional responses. The DAPS scales include the three PTSD symptom clusters (Reexperiencing, Avoidance, and Hyperarousal) and three associated features of PTSD: Trauma-Specific Dissociation, Suicidality, and Substance Abuse. Two validity scales identify over-reporting and under-reporting of psychological symptoms.
The DAPS Post-traumatic Stress symptom scales have higher internal consistency, greater content coverage, and higher diagnostic efficiency (.87) than many current measures of PTSD.
Unlike other diagnostic measures of PTSD, the DAPS was normed on a group of 406 trauma-exposed men and women in the general population. As a result, an individual's DAPS results can be compared (using T-scores) to the scores of a large group of men and women with a known trauma history. This facilitates the empirical determination of both severity and clinical importance of the results.
The Professional Manual provides information about the development, administration, scoring, interpretation, and psychometric characteristics of the DAPS. It also provides data from the normative sample of trauma-exposed adults from the general population, as well as from trauma-exposed adults in clinical, community, and university validity samples. The Appendix tables provide raw score to T-score transformations based on the normative sample.
Qualification level required:
Level 2. Please see our Test User Qualifications page for guidance
Norms
Sample based on a group of 406 trauma-exposed men and women in the general population.
Duration
20 to 30 minutes to administer; 15 to 20 minutes to score.
Release Note
2001
