Measuring traumatic experiences in a sample of Ethiopian adults: Psychometric properties of the life events checklist-5

Background: Traumatic events. e.g., road traffic accidents, violent conflicts, natural and human-made disas-ters, are common in sub-Saharan Africa. However, validated trauma screening tools to assess trauma at the individual level are lacking in many sub-Saharan African countries, such as Ethiopia, which limits accurate diagnosis and effective care provision.Objective: We sought to measure trauma exposure among cases and controls and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Life Events Checklist for DSM-5 (LEC-5) among Ethiopian adults. Method: This study included 4,183 participants (2,255 cases with a clinical diagnosis of psychosis and 1,928 controls without a history of psychosis) from the Neuropsychiatric Genetics of African Populations-Psychosis (NeuroGAP-Psychosis) study. We conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to group the items into factors/ subscales, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to investigate the best model fit in Ethiopia.Result: 48.7% of participants reported exposure to at least one traumatic event. Physical assault (19.6%), sud-den violent death (12.0%), and sudden accidental death (10.9%) were the three most common traumatic experiences. Cases were twice as likely to report experiences of traumatic events compared to controls (p<0.001). EFA revealed a four-factor/subscale model. CFA results indicated a theoretically-driven seven-fac-tor model to be the preferred model by the goodness of fit (comparative fit index of 0.965 and Tucker-Lewis index of 0.951) and accuracy (root mean square error of approximation of 0.019).Conclusion: Exposure to traumatic events was common in Ethiopia, even more so for individuals with a diag-nosis of psychotic disorders. The LEC-5 demonstrated good construct validity for measuring traumatic events among Ethiopian adults. Future studies that examine criterion validity and test-retest reliability of the LEC-5 in Ethiopia are warranted.(c) 2022 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.