Project description
The attitudes of educational professionals working with children and young people who have experienced trauma are an important factor influencing the quality of educational work. In German-speaking countries, there are currently no methods that measure the attitudes of educational staff (especially teachers) towards trauma-sensitive work. Internationally, the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care Scale (ARTIC) has become established for recording attitude-related professionalisation characteristics (Baker et al., 2016; 2020). The ARTIC scale is an English-language research instrument that measures the trauma-related affective-motivational competence characteristics of professionals in trauma work.
The questionnaire has 45 items covering a total of seven factors (causes, reactions to problem behaviour, empathy & control, self-efficacy, reactions to work, personal support, system-wide support). The test quality of the procedure is good to excellent and the instrument is used primarily in the USA for research into trauma-sensitive work in institutional contexts and for the customised design of training programmes (see Baker et al., 2016; 2020).
For this reason, we are translating the questionnaire into German and validating it interculturally. The translation process follows a standardised procedure and is accompanied by pre-translation and back-translation by German and English-speaking experts. The translated questionnaire is then tested for comprehensibility, clarity and item characteristics in a cognitive and quantitative pre-test. Based on the results, a final revision will then be carried out by the international research team, leading to a final version of the questionnaire. The questionnaire finalised here will then be empirically validated in a quantitative survey and checked in particular with regard to its reliability, factor structure and construct validity. The German-language translation will be available to professionals and researchers for the assessment of trauma-related professionalisation characteristics.
Sources
Baker, C. N., Brown, S. M., Wilcox, P. D., Overstreet, S. & Arora, P. (2016). Development and psychometric evaluation of the attitudes related to trauma-informed care (ARTIC) scale. School Mental Health, 8, pp. 61-76.
Baker, C. N., Brown, S. M., Overstreet, S. & Wilcox, P. D. (2020). Validation of the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care Scale (ARTIC). Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
