Validation of the Korean Version of the Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the psychometric properties of the Korean version of the Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES) and its validity as a screening instrument for the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). METHODS: The study population consisted of two samples. The clinical sample consisted of 60 child and adolescent patients from the Department of Neuropsychiatry, Ilsan Paik Hospital, Inje University College of Medicine. The normal sample consisted of 291 students from four schools (primary, middle, and high schools). We administered four self-report questionnaires (the CRIES, Child Reports of Post-traumatic Symptoms [CROPS], State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children [STAI-C], and Children's Depression Inventory [CDI]) to 351 children and adolescents after obtaining informed consent from all participants and their parents. RESULTS: The CRIES showed good reliability (Cronbach's α for the full scale and subscales ranged from 0.85 to 0.93). The total CRIES score was positively correlated with CROPS, STAI-C, and CDI. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a three-factor structure for the CRIES (intrusion, avoidance, and hyper-arousal) had a significantly better fit than a two-factor model (intrusion/hyper-arousal and avoidance). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that a cutoff of 26 offered the optimum predictive point. That is, this cutoff maximized the balance between sensitivity (0.88) and specificity (0.85). Using this cutoff, the positive predictive value was 0.86, and the negative predictive value was 0.99. CONCLUSION: These findings imply that the CRIES is a highly accurate diagnostic test in clinical settings.