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The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS; Blake et al., 1990) is a structured interview that assesses the 17 key symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as established in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). CAPS data from 524 treatment-seeking male military veterans were submitted to confirmatory factor analysis to test a series of nested models reflecting alternative representations of PTSD dimensionality : (a) a 4-factor, 1st-order solution; (b) a 2-factor, higher order solution; (c) a single-factor, higher order solution; and (d) a single-factor, 1st-order solution. The model of best fit was the 4-factor, 1st-order solution, containing moderately to highly correlated yet distinct 1st-order factors corresponding to the reexperiencing, effortful avoidance, emotional numbing, and hyperarousal aspects of PTSD. Implications for theory, assessment, and future research are presented in this article.
King et al. (Mon,) studied this question.