Detailed Assessment of Posttraumatic Stress (DAPS)

 

This page contains a psychometric review of the DAPS. Abstracts for studies using the DAPS are searchable under the PILOTS database, entering "Detailed Assessment of Posttraumatic Stress"

 

 The Detailed Assessment of Posttraumatic Stress (DAPS) is an 105-item inventory that provides detailed information on an adult client's history of various types of trauma exposure, as well as his or her immediate psychological reactions (cognitive, emotional, and dissociative), enduring posttraumatic stress symptoms (reexperiencing, avoidance, and hyperarousal), and level of posttraumatic impairment in the context of a specific traumatic event.  The event-focus of the DAPS allows for a tentative DSM-IV diagnoses of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Acute Stress Disorder (ASD).  The DAPS also includes two validity scales that evaluate under- and over-report of symptoms, and three supplementary scales that evaluate the event-related dissociation, substance abuse, and suicidality often associated with posttraumatic stress.

Standardization studies of the DAPS  involved (a) a normative group of 433 general population adults who have experienced at least one DSM-IV-type trauma, (b) 215 validity subjects (145 clinical, 70 nonclinical), and c) 290 university students. This test is published by Psychological Assessment Resources.

The components of the DAPS are:

  • Response Validity [16 items] - Evaluates the respondent's tendency to present as either especially symptom-free or as overly symptomatic.  This component contains two scales:
    1. Positive Bias [8 items] - Indicates the extent of defensiveness or underendorsement of DAPS items, as reflected in a tendency to deny even common or "normal" experiences.
    2. Negative Bias [8 items] - Indicates the extent of symptom over-endorsement, as reflected in a tendency to endorse very uncommon, if not bizarre, DAPS items.
         
  • Trauma specification [14 items] - Reviews all potential traumatic events (i.e., involving injury or fear of injury or death) the client has been exposed to in his/her lifetime, such as natural disasters, motor vehicle accidents, rape, physical assault, and child abuse, and specifies which trauma the client experiences as most upsetting (or the one on which the refering clinician wishes to focus) and when this event occured.  A summary Relative Trauma Exposure scale indicates whether the client's lifetime exposure to traumatic events is in the "normal" range, or whether he/she has been exposed to more or less traumas than the normative group.
     
  • Immediate trauma impacts [14 items] -  Reviews eight immediate psychological reactions to the most upsetting trauma; not only the three necessary for a DSM-IV diagnosis of PTSD and ASD (fear, horror, and helplessness), but also five additional responses (guilt, shame or humiliation, disgust, upsetness, and expectation of death) that have been shown to be clinically important.  Each immediate response is evaluated for its extremity as compared to the normative group of general population individuals with a trauma history.  This component includes two scales:
    1. Peritraumatic Distress [8 items] - Indicates the total amount of distress the client experienced at the time of the trauma or soon thereafter.
    2.  Peritraumatic Dissociation [6 items] - Evaluates the extent to which the client experienced depersonalization, derealization, or other dissociative reactions during the trauma - a phenomena that has been shown in the clinical literature to predict later posttraumatic stress.
       
  • Posttraumatic response [35 items] - Consists of four trauma symptom scales
    1. Reexperiencing [10 items] - Evaluates the intrusive reexperiencing symptoms (e.g., flashbacks, nightmares) found in PTSD, ASD, and other trauma-related syndromes. Indicates whether the level of symptom endorsement is in the "PTSD range" for reexperiencing.
    2. Avoidance [10 items] - Evaluates the avoidance and numbing symptoms (e.g., avoiding people or places reminiscent of the trauma, emotional constriction or numbing) found in PTSD, ASD, and other trauma-related syndromes. Indicates whether the level of symptom endorsement is in the "PTSD range" for avoidance.
    3. Hyperarousal [10 items] - Evaluates the sympathetic hyperarousal symptoms (e.g., jumpiness, irritability) found in PTSD, ASD, and other trauma-related syndromes. Indicates whether the level of symptom endorsement is in the "PTSD range" for hyperarousal.
    4. Posttraumatic Impairment [5 items] - Evaluates the extent to which posttraumatic symptoms interfere with the client's psychosocial functioning in work, school, social situations, etc.
       
  • Supplementary scales [24 items] - Evaluates three clinical phenomena that are often co-morbid with PTSD, ASD, and other trauma-related syndromes:
    1. Trauma-specific Dissociation [4 items] - Evaluates the dissociative symptoms (e.g., detachment, derealization) often found to occur immediately after a trauma and that are part of the ASD diagnosis.
    2. Substance Abuse [10 items]
    3. Suicidality [10 items]
       
  • Diagnostic output - Provides probable DSM-IV diagnoses of
    1. PTSD
    2. ASD

The scales of the DAPS are reliable and demonstrate a variety of types of validity in clinical and nonclinical contexts. The probable DSM-IV PTSD diagnosis generated by the DAPS has good sensitivity (.88) and specificity (.86) with regard to the "gold standard" PTSD interview (the CAPS), despite the substantially lesser time required for DAPS administration and scoring.

There is an  interpretive report for the DAPS: The DAPS-IR.   CLICK Here for information. 

PUBLICATIONS USING THE DAPS:

Briere, J. (2006). Dissociative symptoms and trauma exposure: specificity, affect dysregulation, and posttraumatic stress. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 194, 78-82.

Briere, J., Scott, C., & Weathers, F.W. (2005).  Peritraumatic and persistent dissociation in the presumed etiology of PTSD.  American Journal of Psychiatry, 162, 2295-2301.

Briere, J.  (2001).  Detailed Assessment of Posttraumatic Stress (DAPS).  Odessa, Florida: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Briere, J., & Runtz, M.R. (2002). The Inventory of Altered Self-Capacities (IASC):  A standardized measure of identity, affect regulation, and relationship disturbance.  Assessment, 9, 230-239.

Briere, J., Weathers, F.W., & Runtz, M. (2005).  Is dissociation a multidimensional construct?  Data from the Multiscale Dissociation Inventory.  Journal of Traumatic Stress, 18, 221-231.

Dell, P.F. (2006).  The Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation (MID): a comprehensive measure of pathological dissociation.  Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 7, 77-106.

Dietrich, A.M. (2003).  Characteristics of child maltreatment, psychological dissociation, and somatoform dissociation of Canadian inmates. Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 4, 81-100.

Dietrich, A.m. (2007). Childhood maltreatment and revictimization: the role of affect dysregulation, interpersonal relatedness difficulties and posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 8, 25-51.

Messer, J.M., & Fremouw, W.J. (2007). Detecting malingered posttraumatic stress disorder using the Morel Emotional Numbing Test-Revised (MENT-R) and the Miller Forensic Assessment of Symptoms Test (M-FAST)  Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, 7, 33-57.