The measure begins with an item designed to assess whether the respondent has had any exposure to traumatic events. If a respondent denies exposure, the PC-PTSD-5 is complete with a score of 0.
If a respondent indicates a trauma history – experiencing a traumatic event over the course of their life – the respondent is instructed to answer five additional yes/no questions about how that trauma has affected them over the past month.
Preliminary results from validation studies suggest that a cut-point of 3 on the PC-PTSD-5 (e.g., respondent answers ‘yes’ to any 3 of 5 questions about how the traumatic event(s) have affected them over the past month) is optimally sensitive to probable PTSD. Optimising sensitivity minimises false negative screen results. Using a cut-point of 4 is considered optimally efficient. Optimising efficiency balances false positive and false negative results.
Total score is sum of ‘YES’ responses in items 1 to 5.