The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM–5 (CAPS-5): Development and Initial Psychometric Evaluation in Military Veterans

By F. Weathers, Michelle J. Bovin, Daniel J Lee, Denise Sloan, P. Schnurr, D. Kaloupek, T. Keane, Brian Marx. Psychological Assessment, 2017

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The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) is an extensively validated and widely used structured diagnostic interview for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The CAPS was recently revised to correspond with PTSD criteria in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). This article describes the development of the CAPS for DSM–5 (CAPS-5) and presents the results of an initial psychometric evaluation of CAPS-5 scores in 2 samples of military veterans (Ns = 165 and 207). CAPS-5 diagnosis demonstrated strong interrater reliability (к = .78 to 1.00, depending on the scoring rule) and test–retest reliability (к = .83), as well as strong correspondence with a diagnosis based on the CAPS for DSM–IV (CAPS-IV; к = .84 when optimally calibrated). CAPS-5 total severity score demonstrated high internal consistency (&agr; = .88) and interrater reliability (ICC = .91) and good test–retest reliability (ICC = .78). It also demonstrated good convergent validity with total severity score on the CAPS-IV (r = .83) and PTSD Checklist for DSM–5 (r = .66) and good discriminant validity with measures of anxiety, depression, somatization, functional impairment, psychopathy, and alcohol abuse (rs = .02 to .54). Overall, these results indicate that the CAPS-5 is a psychometrically sound measure of DSM–5 PTSD diagnosis and symptom severity. Importantly, the CAPS-5 strongly corresponds with the CAPS-IV, which suggests that backward compatibility with the CAPS-IV was maintained and that the CAPS-5 provides continuity in evidence-based assessment of PTSD in the transition from DSM–IV to DSM–5 criteria.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Epidemiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d725938d0d6c7a20e9236864c7ccd7c78405d0c1

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In Clinical Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The prevalence of mental illness in refugees and asylum seekers: A systematic review and meta-analysis (2020, methodology): “Five diagnostic measures were used (S1 Table): Structured Clinical Interview for DSM (SCID) [54], Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.) [55], Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) [56], and WHO WMH-CIDI [18].”
Assessing Racial Trauma Within a DSM–5 Framework: The UConn Racial/Ethnic Stress & Trauma Survey (2018, methodology): “Among the more extensively used PTSD measures is the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS; Blake et al., 1990; CAPS-5; Weathers et al., 2013), which includes both a self-report section and a formal interview section and has been used widely for people of all races.”