Developmental Trauma Assessment Test
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- Never
- Sometimes
- Often
- Almost always
- Never
- Sometimes
- Often
- Almost always
- Never
- Sometimes
- Often
- Almost always
Developmental Trauma Assessment Test - Description and methodology of the test
For readers examining whether early relationship disruption still shapes present-day functioning, the Developmental Trauma Assessment Test offers a structured way to consider recurring patterns in relationships, self-direction, emotional responses, and daily life. As a childhood trauma assessment, it suits people reflecting on difficulty accepting help, strong reactions to conflict, emptiness, or uncertainty about personal needs. The result highlights themes for focused self-reflection.
What This Assessment Explores
The questionnaire examines present-day patterns that may follow disrupted relationships with parents or caregivers in early life. It considers how they appear in closeness, trust, autonomy, responsibility, emotional regulation, attention, sleep, memory, threat sensitivity, and expectations about the future.
The item themes are:
- Closeness and trust show how the respondent experiences connection, support, and other people’s motives.
- Autonomy and self-direction reflect responsibility, organization, follow-through, and awareness of needs.
- Emotional regulation and inner distress indicate reactivity, irritability, emptiness, and difficulty identifying feelings.
- Attention, sleep, memory, and caution capture difficulties with focus, rest, recollection, and perceived threat.
The Developmental Trauma scale measures the severity of developmental trauma symptoms arising in early childhood from disrupted relationships with parents or caregivers. Its result is Developmental Trauma, 40-160: Low 40-82 indicates minimal symptoms, Moderate 83-120 indicates a moderate level, or High 121-160 indicates pronounced symptoms.
Methodology and Scientific Basis
Each statement uses four response options-Never, Sometimes, Often, and Almost always. The respondent rates how frequently the pattern applies, rather than choosing a cause or recounting a specific event. The questionnaire presents one Developmental Trauma result with interpretation shown through the displayed Low, Moderate, and High bands.
The questionnaire is conceptually consistent with the Developmental Trauma Self-Quiz described by Weinhold and Weinhold, which addresses dependency, boundaries, closeness, emotional reactivity, and practical self-management. It is not presented as a direct adaptation of that instrument. Its developmental framework also aligns with Bessel van der Kolk’s account of developmental trauma and with Spinazzola, van der Kolk, and Ford’s discussion of interpersonal trauma and attachment adversity.
Used as a self-reflection tool, a developmental trauma questionnaire can organize observations; the displayed result describes symptom severity and possible effects on personality, self-esteem, and independence. Because answers depend on current context, memory, self-awareness, and willingness to endorse difficult experiences, the result cannot establish when a pattern began or prove that early trauma caused it.
- Weinhold, Barry K., and Janae B. Weinhold. Breaking Free of the Co-Dependency Trap. Revised ed., New World Library, 2008. ISBN 978-1-57731-614-5.
- van der Kolk, Bessel A. Developmental Trauma Disorder: Toward a Rational Diagnosis for Children with Complex Trauma Histories. Psychiatric Annals, vol. 35, no. 5, 2005, pp. 401-408. 10.3928/00485713-20050501-06.
- Spinazzola, Joseph, Bessel van der Kolk, and Julian D. Ford. When Nowhere Is Safe: Interpersonal Trauma and Attachment Adversity as Antecedents of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Developmental Trauma Disorder. Journal of Traumatic Stress, vol. 31, no. 5, 2018, pp. 631-642. 10.1002/jts.22320.
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