Reliability and Validity of the Korean Version of Clinician-Administered Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Scale for DSM-5

Background: For diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) is one of the most widely used structured diagnostic interviews. Methods: In this study, we aimed to develop and validate the Korean version of CAPS for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition ([DSM-5] K-CAPS-5). Seventy-one subjects with PTSD, 74 with mood disorder or anxiety disorder, and 99 as healthy controls were enrolled. The Korean version of the structured clinical interview for DSM-5-research version was used to assess the convergent validity of K-CAPS-5. BDI-II, BAI, IES-R, and STAI was used to evaluate the concurrent validity. Results: All subjects completed various psychometric assessments including K-CAPS-5. K-CAPS-5 presented good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.92) and test-retest reliability (r= 0.91). K-CAPS-5 showed strong correlations with the structured clinical interview for DSM-5 PTSD (k = 0.893). Among the three subject groups listed above there were significant differences in the K-CAPS-5 total score. The data were best explained by a six-factor model. Conclusion: These results demonstrated the good reliability and validity of K-CAPS-5 and its suitability for use as a simple but structured instrument for PTSD assessment.