Psychometric Validation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM– 5 (PCL-5) among Rwandan Undergraduate Students

Introduction: the posttraumatic stress disorder checklist for dsm– 5 (pcl-5) is one of the most commonly used tools in measuring ptsd symptoms. however, little is known about its validity in post-genocide rwanda. this research therefore, aimed at determining psychometric properties and diagnostic utility of the pcl-5 scale among university students in rwanda.method: a total of 143 participants completed pcl-5, the harvard trauma questionnaire-part4 (htq-part4), and the hopkins symptom checklist-25 (anxiety [hscl-a] and depression [hscl-d] subscales). the cronbach's alpha coefficient and the mean item inter-correlation (miic) were computed to assess the tool reliability and receiver operator characteristics (roc) was performed to determine a valid cutoff-score.results: findings indicated excellent internal consistency for pcl-5 total score and each of the four subscales. pcl-5 scores correlated strongly with scores on htq-part4, hscl-d and hscl-a, supporting convergent validity. the diagnostic accuracy of the scale was excellent (auc=0.934, p<.001). the optimal cutoff score of ≥23 optimized sensitivity (0.887) while maintaining adequate specificity (0.889).conclusion: it can be concluded that pcl-5 has high validity, internal consistency, and psychometric properties when applied to the sample of rwandan students.