Traumatic Experience Checklist
Why the TEC is not a diagnostic tool.
How reassuring it would be if we could know based on a score on an inventory like the TEC, if a person is traumatised or not. But whether or not someone is injured is not just due to an event as such.
For one, this is because events do not exist by themselves. What exists are intrinsic relations between subjects and (parts of) their Umwelt. Phrased technically, living becomings and beings are ecological systems (E) that enact inherent relations (x) of their subjectivity (S) and (parts of) their Umwelt (U). We can cast this in a formula that seems treacherously simple: E —> S x U.
The TEC asks about ‘events'. These events, thus, are not parts of an objective world, of a world that could exist by itself. Whether or not a person endorses an item of the TEC, is thus not caused by ‘objective events’ but by the person’s S x U.
Next, reporting that something ‘traumatic’ happened, does not imply that the person got injured as a result. The TEC or any other ’trauma questionnaire', then, does not tell us if the person is traumatised—however slightly or deeply. It only tells us what a person is currently reporting as to ‘what happened’. Trauma questionnaires strictly speaking nquire about ‘potentially traumatising’ events. The presence of absence of a possible injury must be assessed in other ways.
In this light, it is nonsensical to assign cut-off point on an instrument like the TEC. As scientists, we can relate simple or composite TEC scores with other variables (e.g., diagnostic groups, scores for ‘dissociation’, reactions to experimental cues). As clinicians, we have a look at the TEC scores and get an impression of what the person is willing and able to tell us about important aspects of their life history.
The simple answer is that the TEC is an inventory, not a diagnostic tool.
The TEC (Nijenhuis et al., 2002) is a self-report measure addressing potentially traumatising events. It is a reliable and valid self-report instrument that can be used in clinical practice and research. Different scores can be calculated including a cumulative score, and scores for emotional neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and bodily threat from a person.
In clinical practice systematic assessment of the patient's trauma history is a relatively neglected area. Highly vulnerable individuals should not be exposed to self-report trauma questionnaires or untimely trauma interviews. However, assessment of trauma history, even if stressful, is appreciated by most patients and rewarding to clinicians.
TEC Translations
The Traumatic Experience Checklist is available in eleven languages:
Dutch: TEC in het Nederlands
English: TEC in English
French: TEC en français
German: TEC in deutsch
Italian: TEC in Italiano
Norwegian: TEC på norsk
Polish: TEC w języku polskim
Portuguese: TEC em português
Spanish: TEC en español
Swedish: TEC på svenska
Turkish: Türkçe TEC
Urdu: TEC اردو میں۔
References TEC
Nijenhuis, E.R.S., Van der Hart, O., & Kruger, K. (2002).
The psychometric characteristics of the Traumatic Experiences Questionnaire (TEC): First findings among psychiatric outpatients.
Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 9(3), 200-210.
Schumacher, S., Martin-Soelch, C., Rufer, M., Pazhenkottil, A.P., Wirtz, G., Fuhrhans, C., Hindermann, E., & Mueller-Pfeiffer, C. (2012). Psychometric characteristics of the German adaptation of the traumatic experiences checklist (TEC). Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 4(3):338-346.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024044
Espirito-Santo, H., Rocha, P., Gonçalves, L., Cassimo, S., Martins, L., & Xavier, M. (2013). 1544 – The portuguese traumatic experiences checklist (tec): psychometrics and prevalence of traumatic experiences. European Psychiatry, 28, Supplement 1, page 1.
Schimmenti, A. (2018). The trauma factor: Examining the relationships among different types of trauma, dissociation, and psychopathology. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 19(5), 552-571. DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2017.1402400