Stressful Life Events Screening Questionnaire (SLESQ)

Goodman, Corcoran, Turner, Yuan, & Green, 1998

Description

The Stressful Life Events Screening Questionnaire (SLESQ) is a 13-item self-report measure for non-treatment seeking samples that assesses lifetime exposure to traumatic events. Eleven specific and 2 general categories of events, such as a life-threatening accident, physical and sexual abuse, witness to another person being killed or assaulted, are examined. For each event, respondents are asked to indicate whether the event occurred ("yes" or "no"), their age at time of the event, as well as other specific items related to the event, such as the frequency, duration, whether anyone died, or was hospitalization, etc. The SLESQ is recommended for research and general screening purposes, and is available in English and Spanish.

Sample Item

Was physical force or a weapon ever used against you in a robbery or a mugging? How many perpetrators? Describe physical force. Did anyone die? What injuries did you receive? Was your life in danger?

References

Goodman, L., Corcoran, C., Turner, K., Yuan, N., & Green, B. (1998). Assessing traumatic event exposure: General issues and preliminary findings for the Stressful Life Events Screening Questionnaire. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 11(3), 521-542.

Green, B., Chung, J., Daroowalla, A., Kaltman, S., & DeBenedictis, C. (2006). Evaluating the Cultural Validity of the Stressful Life Events Screening Questionnaire. Violence Against Women, 12(12), 191-213.

Additional Reviews

Orsillo (2001) (PDF) p. 287

Orsillo, Susan M. (2001). Measures for acute stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. In M.M. Antony & S.M. Orsillo (Eds.), Practitioner's guide to empirically based measures of anxiety (pp. 255-307). New York: KluwerAcademic/Plenum. PILOTS ID 24368

Norris and Hamblen (2004) (PDF) p. 70.

Norris, Fran H. & Hamblen, Jessica L. (2004). Standardized self-report measures of civilian trauma and PTSD. In J.P. Wilson, T.M. Keane & T. Martin (Eds.), Assessing psychological trauma and PTSD (pp. 63-102). New York: Guilford Press. PILOTS ID 18638

To Obtain Scale

Available for download at http://ctc.georgetown.edu/gctc_toolkit.html*

Lisa A. Goodman
Email: goodmalc@bc.edu

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.