A gender specific psychometric analysis of the early trauma inventory short form in cocaine dependent adults.

This study evaluated the gender specific psychometric properties of the Early Trauma Inventory-Short Form (ETI-SF) in a clinical sample of cocaine dependent men (N=58) and women (N=34). Participants were administered the ETI-SF, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short Form (CTQ-SF), and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I). Tests of internal consistency, convergent validity, and predictive validity were conducted separately by gender. Findings indicated that the ETI-SF demonstrated good internal consistency; Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.73 to 0.80 for men and from 0.70 to 0.77 for women. The measure also demonstrated good convergence with the CTQ-SF in both sexes, indicating that reports of child maltreatment are consistent across interview and self-report measures. Further, predictive validity was demonstrated by the ability of various ETI-SF scales to predict the co-occurrence of psychiatric disorders commonly associated with early trauma. These included lifetime diagnosis of PTSD in men and women, the lifetime diagnosis of major depressive disorder in men, and the lifetime diagnoses of alcohol use disorders in women. The findings support the utility of the ETI-SF as a clinical research tool to obtain data on specific types of early trauma in drug abusing samples.