What is the ETRAD-Q?
The Questionnaire sur les Troubles d’Origine traumatique Précoces (Q-TOP), the original French-language version of the Early TRAuma-related Disorders Questionnaire (ETRAD-Q), was developed to screen for reactive attachment disorder (RAD) and disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED), two diagnoses in the trauma- and stressor-related disorders section of the DSM-5.
This caregiver-report questionnaire comprises 42 items regarding children’s behaviours to be rated on a four-point Likert scale (not at all true, a little bit true, pretty much true, very much true). The questionnaire comprise a RAD scale (25 items) and a DSED scale (17 items*).
There are two subscales for DSED:
- Interaction with unfamiliar adults (criteria A1, A4): 8 items
- Social disinhibition (criteria A2, A3 and B): 9 items
There are three subscales for RAD:
- Low selective attachment (criteria A1 and A2): 8 items
- Low social and emotional responsiveness (criteria B1 and B2): 9 items
- Emotional unpredictability (criterion B3): 8 items
A validation study published in Assessment (Monette et al., 2022) showed that the ETRAD-Q possesses excellent psychometric properties in terms of factor validity, X2(774) = 2102.827, RMSEA = .046, CFI = .959, TLI = .957, SRMR = .061, when tested on a sample of community children (n = 578) and at-risk children (n = 245 in out-of-home care or adopted), and in terms of internal consistency (all Omega > .88) and test-retest reliability (all r > .83). The ETRAD-Q also demonstrated very good convergent validity. Its RAD subscales correlated strongly with those of the RPQ, r = .83, and the RADA interview, r = .75, and its DSED subscales correlated strongly with those of the RPQ, r = .89, and the RADA interview, r = .78.
The ETRAD-Q subscales allow differentiating three groups of children:
- Community children;
- At-risk children (adopted or in CPS care);
- At-risk children with a clinical diagnosis of attachment disorder (by a community practitioner).
The technical manual (to be downloaded with the ETRAD-Q kit, see below) includes a replication of these validation analyses, carried out on a new independent sample, normative data, and additional analyses (e.g. ROC curves). Reading the technical manual is required to use the tool. We would like to thank the Institut universitaire Jeunes en difficulté (IUJD) for the financial support that made it possible to complete the validation study, as well as the development of the ETRAD-Q kit (web page, technical manual, final questionnaire, Excel corrector). The kit is available in French and English. If you would like to translate the instrument into another language, please contact us. There are already teams working on translating the questionnaire into different languages at the moment.
* The validation paper (Monette et al., 2022) suggested removing one item from the DSED scale, however, additional validation analyses in the technical manual (Monette, 2024) support the use of all questionnaire items (42 items).
Auteurs du Q-TOP
Sebastien Monette
Jane Doe
Meet the Author
Sébastien Monette, PhD-PsyD (Psychology)
Neuropsychologist, Service d’intervention spécialisé et de soutien clinique (SISSC), CCSMTL
Clinician-Researcher, Institut Universitaire Jeunes en difficulté (IUJD), CCSMTL
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Université de Sherbrooke (UdS)
Director of the Psychopathology and Maltreatment Lab
