Preliminary psychometric evidence for the Arabic PCL-5-S in Lebanese public-school adolescents - 10/10/26

Doi : 10.1016/j.ejtd.2026.100756

Myriam El Khoury-Malhame ^a, Souheil Hallit ^b,^c, Ramón-Iker Soria-Royuela ^d, Roni Chaaya ^a, Perla Zgheib ^a, Sleiman El Hajj ^e, Maria-Jose Sanchez-Ruiz ^a,^f, Rita Doumit ^g,^⁎

^a Department of Social and Education Sciences, Psychology Program, School of Arts and Sciences, Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon

^b School of Medicine and Medical Sciences, Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, P.O. Box 446, Jounieh, Lebanon

^c Applied Science Research Center, Applied Science Private University, Amman, Jordan

^d Science, Technology and Society Research Unit, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas, Madrid, Spain

^e Department of Communication, Arts and Languages, School of Arts and Sciences, Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon

^f Department of Personality Psychology, Assessment, and Psychological Treatment, School of Psychology, UNED, Madrid, Spain

^g Alice Ramez School of Nursing, Lebanese American University, Byblos, Lebanon

^⁎ Corresponding author at: Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing, Lebanese American University, P.O. Box: 36-Byblos, Lebanon. Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing, Lebanese American University P.O. Box: 36-Byblos Lebanon

Highlights

•	The PCL-5-S is a self-report screening tool for post-traumatic stress symptoms.
•	The Arabic PCL-5-S showed preliminary support for a unidimensional structure, adequate internal consistency, and gender measurement invariance in Lebanese public-school adolescents..
•	The Arabic PCL-5-S showed theoretically expected associations with anxiety, depressive symptoms, and well-being, providing limited evidence of construct validity.

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Abstract

Introduction

Although the experience of trauma could be viewed as inherent to the human condition, it can lead to significant mental and physical health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The PCL-5-S is a new brief and reliable instrument to measure PTSD symptoms; however, its internal consistency and validity in Lebanon remain understudied. Our study aimed to assess the psychometric properties of an Arabic version of the PCL-5-S scale in a sample of Lebanese adolescents.

Methods

This study involved 716 Lebanese students aged between 14 and 21 years recruited from three public schools. After excluding 98 records with no observed information on any of the 27 analytic variables, 618 participants were retained for multiple imputation and analysis. Participants completed the PCL-5-S (PTSD), PHQ-9 (depression), GAD-7 (anxiety) and WHO-5 (wellbeing) Arabic questionnaires.

Results

The four items of the PCL-5-S converged into a single factor consistent with the one-factor representation of the scale. Composite internal consistency scores were adequate in the sample (ω = .74 / α = .74). The scale also showed gender invariance at the configural, threshold, metric, scalar, and strict levels, with girls expectedly having higher PTSD symptoms than boys, as expected. PCL-5-S scores were positively associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms and negatively associated with well-being.

Conclusion

The Arabic PCL-5-S showed preliminary evidence of internal consistency, internal structure, gender measurement invariance, and theoretically expected associations with related constructs in this Lebanese public-school adolescent sample. The scale showed satisfactory psychometric properties. Further validation against independent PTSD measures and in longitudinal and broader Arabic-speaking samples is needed before drawing conclusions about diagnostic, monitoring, or longitudinal utility.

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Keywords : PTSD, Psychometric, Validity, PCL-5-S, Adolescents

Plan

Author Contribution Statement: All authors have contributed actively to the study, critically reviewed the manuscript and approved the final version submitted for publication. Myriam El-Khoury-Malhame: Conceptualization, Design, Supervision, Analysis and Writing. Souheil Hallit: Data curation and analysis. Ramón-Iker Soria-Royuela: Data curation, analysis and writing. Roni Chaaya: Data collection, coding, writing, original draft preparation. Perla Zgheib: Data collection and writing. Sleiman El Hajj: writing and original draft preparation. Maria-Jose Sanchez-Ruiz: Conceptualization, supervision, and analysis. Rita Doumit: analysis, original draft preparation, editing and writing.