A comparative study of posttraumatic stress disorder assessment under standard conditions and in the field

Little is known about the performance of clinician-administered structured diagnostic interviews when given under variable levels of examiner training and monitoring. We sought to explore this question. We examined the performance of a self-report questionnaire and a structured clinical interview in the assessment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in two community samples of war veterans. One sample was interviewed under standard conditions (N = 372) and the other under unknown and less standardized conditions (N = 420), more closely approximating 'field conditions'. Interview results were used to predict questionnaire-based PTSD status. Kappas, sensitivities, specificities, and positive predictive powers were moderate and of similar magnitude in both samples. Our results suggest that even under uncertain ('field') conditions, clinician-administered structured interviews can produce results comparable to those produced under more tightly controlled conditions.