The Traumatic Stress Institute fosters the transformation of organizations and service systems to trauma-informed care (TIC) through the delivery of whole-system consultation, professional training, coaching, and research.
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ARTIC Scale: Leading the Way in Trauma-Informed Care Assessment

August 31, 2021 / by Steve Brown, PsyD

In August 2021, the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare officially added the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale to their list of evidence-based measurement tools for child welfare. The ARTIC Scale received an assessment rating of A – Psychometrics Well-Demonstrated,” the highest rating offered by the CEBC. It is the only measure of trauma-informed care (TIC) listed on the CEBC.

ARTIC CEBC Graphic

The minimum standard for this “A-rating” is publication of two or more published peer-reviewed studies that establish the measure’s psychometrics (e.g. reliability and validity, sensitivity and specificity, etc.), as noted on the CEBC website. Using a tool with strong psychometric properties ensures that evaluators are, in fact, measuring what they are wanting to measure.

In 2016, a peer-reviewed article was published in School Mental Health and in 2020 a second study was published Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Both articles confirmed the psychometric properties of the ARTIC Scale.

Since 2016 the ARTIC Scale has been used in hundreds of trauma-informed care studies and program evaluations globally. The Paper & Pencil ARTIC Scale version, popular with graduate students and university researchers, has been or will be translated into 8 languages (currently Spanish, French, Japanese, Farsi, and Dutch — with Turkish, Greek, and German in process). In 2019 an online version of the ARTIC Scale was launched, with user-friendly automated survey administration, data analysis, and results dashboards for organizations and individual staff. To-date the Online ARTIC platform has been used to support more than 100 trauma-informed care studies and program evaluations through more than 50,000 survey administrations.

The ARTIC Scale measures professional and para-professional attitudes toward TIC and has become a go-to measure for TIC program evaluation in a variety of settings, including:

  • Early childhood education/Head Start
  • Traditional K-12 school systems
  • Therapeutic schools
  • Child welfare systems
  • Behavioral health systems
  • Hospitals and health care systems
  • Juvenile justice systems

 To learn more about the ARTIC Scale and how it can support your TIC program evaluation, schedule a call with an ARTIC Consultant.

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Tags: Measurement & Research

Steve Brown, PsyD

Written by Steve Brown, PsyD

Steve Brown, Psy.D., is the Director of the Traumatic Stress Institute of Klingberg Family Centers. A clinical psychologist, he is a primary architect of TSI’s internationally-recognized whole-system change process to trauma-informed care. He is a co-creator, with Dr. Courtney Baker, of the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale, one of the first psychometric measures of TIC. He trains professionals nationally on psychological trauma and trauma-informed care. In addition to being a psychologist, he is a long time sexuality educator/trainer and author of Streetwise to Sex-Wise: Sexuality Education for High Risk Youth, a sexuality education curricula used internationally by agencies and schools serving high-risk youth.