Avoidance behaviour of patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. Initial development of a questionnaire, psychometric properties and treatment sensitivity.

In this study, the development of the Posttraumatic Avoidance Behaviour Questionnaire (PABQ) is described and validated in 437 participants; PTSD patients (N = 75), clinical controls (patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia; PDA) (N = 50), and non-clinical traumatized controls (N = 312). Item reduction and exploratory factor analyses yielded 25 items reflecting seven factors. Internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent and discriminative validity of the PABQ proved adequate. In a second study, the PABQ showed to be sensitive to change due to exposure treatment outcome (N = 26).