Life Events Checklist (LEC)

Blake, Weathers, Nagy, Kaloupek, Charney, & Keane, 1995

Description

The Life Events Checklist (LEC) is a brief, 17-item, self-report measure designed to screen for potentially traumatic events in a respondent's lifetime. The LEC assesses exposure to 16 events known to potentially result in PTSD or distress and includes one item assessing any other extraordinarily stressful event not captured in the first 16 items.

For each item, the respondent checks whether the event (a) happened to them personally, (b) they witnessed the event, (c) they learned about the event, (d) they are not sure if the item applies to them, and (e) the item does not apply to them.

The LEC was developed concurrently with the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and is administered before the CAPS. The LEC has demonstrated adequate psychometric properties as a stand-alone assessment of traumatic exposure, particularly when evaluating consistency of events that actually happened to a respondent.

The LEC has also demonstrated convergent validity with measures assessing varying levels of exposure to potentially traumatic events and psychopathology known to relate to traumatic exposure. However, the LEC does not establish that the respondent has experienced an event with sufficient severity to meet DSM-IV criteria for a traumatic exposure (Criterion A1), and it does not assess peritraumatic emotional experiences (Criterion A2).

Scoring

Items in which the respondent endorsed that the event happened to them personally receive a score of 1; all other responses receive a score of 0. Item scores are summed for a total score.

Example Item

"Natural disaster (for example, flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake)"

References

Gray, M. J., Litz, B. T., Hsu, J. L. & Lombardo, T. W. (2004). The psychometric properties of the Life Events Checklist. Assessment, 11, 330-341.

To Obtain Scale

Download the Life Events Checklist (PDF)

Measure availability: Information on measures is available to everyone. However, the assessment tools themselves can only be distributed to qualified mental health professionals and researchers. We maintain measures developed by affiliated staff of the National Center for PTSD.