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

For diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) is one of the most widely used structured diagnostic interviews. 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. All subjects completed various psychometric assessments including K-CAPS-5. K-CAPS-5 presented good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.92) and test-retest reliability ( = 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. 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.