[Validation of the Peritraumatic Distress Inventory's French translation].

Objective: This article outlines the French translation and validation of the Peritraumatic Distress Inventory (PDI) in a psychotrauma outpatient sample.

Method: A total of 127 French-speaking individuals were assessed from 2001 to 2002, at their first psychiatric visit for a traumatic event. An assessment at 3 months was offered by mail to control temporal stability.

Results: The PDI French validation has good internal consistency, with a 0.83 Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Test-retest shows a very satisfying temporal stability, with a 0.79 coefficient of intraclass correlation in a confidence interval between 0.61 and 0.89. The concurrent validity analyzed through the correlation with the Impact of Event Scale Revised (IES-R), the Peritraumatic Dissociation Questionnaire (PDEQ), and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is very good. Further, the principal component analysis shows a bivariate solution that explains 45% of variance.

Conclusion: The PDI French version has a satisfying psychometric validity. Moreover, the factor pattern in this translation is very close to that in the PDI's original version.