Validation in literary Arabic among Tunisian soldiers of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder checklist for DSM-5

Abstract

post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a topical issue due to the increase in armed conflicts and terrorist attacks in recent decades. The PCL-5 scale is used to screen and monitor patients with PTSD. The aim of our work was to validate a literary Arabic version of this scale on a population of Tunisian soldiers. the translation of the PCL-5 scale into Tunisian literary Arabic was performed according to the back-translation technique described by Werner and Campbell and recommended by Brislin. Cross-cultural validation was conducted in 7 steps according to Vallerand's method. Data collection was conducted at the psychiatry department of the Military Hospital of Tunis from February 2019 to December 2020. we recruited 300 military personnel, 150 of whom were followed for PTSD. Cronbach's alpha was 0.98 indicating good internal consistency. The study of inter-item correlations revealed a total Spearman index of 0.75. This index indicates a good homogeneity of the translated scale items. Construct validity was checked using the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin index (K-M-O) and Bartlett's test of sphericity. The latter was significant (p<0.000), and the K-M-O index was 0.969, indicating that the correlations between the items were of good quality. our study showed that the Arabic version of the PCL-5 scale has satisfactory psychometric properties comparable to those of the original version.