A brief two-item screener for detecting a history of physical or sexual abuse in childhood.
BACKGROUND
A number of medical practice guidelines and recommendations call for screening adult patients for a history of physical or sexual abuse in childhood, but no brief screening tools exist. The objective of this study was to assess the accuracy of a two-item screener for physical or sexual abuse in childhood.


METHODS
This is a cross-sectional study of randomly selected women (aged 18-65 years) from a large health maintenance organization. One thousand two hundred twenty-five patients were administered a questionnaire, which included two items in a brief screener: (a) "When I was growing up, people in my family hit me so hard that it left me with bruises or marks" and (b) "When I was growing up, someone tried to touch me in a sexual way or tried to make me touch them." A subset of 216 patients completed a semistructured interview for a history of physical or sexual abuse in childhood.


RESULTS
The two-item screener was sensitive (84.8%) and specific (88.1%) for detecting a history of physical or sexual abuse in childhood, as determined by the semistructured interview.


CONCLUSIONS
The two-item screener provides an accurate tool, which is easily integrated into a comprehensive health questionnaire or administered verbally by a clinician, to assess for history of abuse.
Thombs
Brett D
BD
Department of Psychiatry, Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital and McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3T 1E4. brett.thombs@mcgill.ca
Bernstein
David P
DP
Ziegelstein
Roy C
RC
Bennett
Wendy
W
Walker
Edward A
EA
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D008875:Middle Aged; D015995:Prevalence; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires