30-item self-report dissociation screen for adolescents (11-18), scored 0-10 as a mean. Scoring, cutoffs and licensing explained; the questionnaire is not shown pending confirmation of reproduction rights.
Usage conditions apply.The A-DES was published by Armstrong, Putnam, Carlson and colleagues in 1997 and is widely reproduced in clinical and research settings, but unlike the adult DES-II its authors have not published a statement placing it in the public domain, and we have not yet confirmed permission to reproduce the item wording on a commercial site. Until that is confirmed the questionnaire is not shown here. Adults (18+) can complete the DES-II, which is free.
The Adolescent Dissociative Experiences Scale (A-DES) is a 30-item self-report screen for dissociative experiences in young people aged roughly 11 to 18. It is the adolescent counterpart of the adult DES-II, rewritten so that the situations described are ones an adolescent actually meets - school, friends, family - rather than workplaces and driving. Each item is rated on an 11-point scale from 0 (never) to 10 (always), and the score is the mean of the 30 ratings, so it also runs from 0 to 10. Higher scores indicate more frequent dissociative experiences; the scale does not diagnose a dissociative disorder.
The items were written to cover four content areas: dissociative amnesia, absorption and imaginative involvement, passive influence, and depersonalisation and derealisation. In practice, factor analyses in community samples - British, Dutch and, most recently, a Finnish item-response study of over 4,000 adolescents - consistently find a single general dissociation factor rather than four, so the total mean is the score to report. It captures a continuum that runs from everyday absorption and daydreaming through to the amnesia and identity confusion seen in dissociative disorders, which is exactly why a raised score needs a clinical conversation rather than a label.
Where it comes from.
Judith Armstrong, Frank Putnam, Eve Carlson, Deborah Libero and Steven Smith published the A-DES in 1997 in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Putnam and Carlson had already developed the adult DES and the observer-rated Child Dissociative Checklist for younger children; the A-DES filled the gap between them by giving adolescents a first-person measure with age-appropriate wording. The initial validation compared adolescents with dissociative disorders, a mixed psychiatric inpatient sample and non-clinical school pupils, and found that the scale separated the dissociative group from both comparison groups and that scores rose with reported trauma.
The intended use was screening and research: a quick way to flag adolescents whose dissociative experiences warranted a fuller assessment, and a common metric for studying dissociation after maltreatment. It was not designed to track treatment response, and no responsiveness or minimal-important-difference study has been published for it. Since 1997 the scale has been translated and validated in Turkish, Dutch, Korean, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese and Finnish samples, and short forms of 20, 10 and 5 items have been proposed from the Finnish data, although the 30-item original remains the reference version.
How scoring works.
The A-DES has 30 items, each rated on an 11-point scale from 0 (never) to 10 (always), with instructions to answer only for times when the young person has not been using alcohol or drugs. The total score is the mean of the 30 item ratings, so it also runs from 0 to 10; there is no summing to a raw total as on many other scales. Four content areas are represented - dissociative amnesia, absorption and imaginative involvement, passive influence, and depersonalisation and derealisation - although factor analyses in community samples usually find a single general factor.
The only threshold with a published source is a mean of 4.0 or above, used by Kisiel and Lyons (2001) in maltreated children and adolescents and widely adopted since as the point at which a fuller dissociation assessment is warranted. It has never been tested against a diagnostic interview to give sensitivity and specificity, so treat it as a screening prompt, not a diagnostic cut. For context, adolescents with dissociative disorders averaged 4.8 in the original study and 6.2 in a Turkish clinical sample; general psychiatric patients averaged about 2.2; and non-clinical adolescents average between 1.3 and 2.7 depending on the country. The figure of 3.7 that circulates online is a group mean (adolescents with psychotic disorders and abuse-exposed groups scored around 3.7), not a validated cutoff.
Score
Severity
Interpretation
0.0–2.9
Within the non-clinical range
Typical of community adolescents; later UK, Dutch and Turkish samples average about 2.2-2.7.
3.0–3.6
Elevated - warrants clinical enquiry
Above non-clinical levels but below the proposed screening threshold; interpret in clinical context.
3.7–3.9
At the proposed threshold for significant dissociation
A mean score of 3.7 or above was proposed as suggestive of clinically significant dissociation.
4.0–10.0
Clinically significant range
Typical of adolescents with dissociative disorders, who averaged 4.8 in the original validation study.
How well it performs.
The A-DES is internally very reliable: Cronbach's alpha has been 0.92 to 0.94 in every published sample, from the original American clinical groups through British, Dutch and Turkish adolescents, and split-half reliability is around 0.90. Two-week test-retest reliability was 0.77 in Smith and Carlson's 1996 college sample (some secondary sources report 0.73) and 0.91 in the Turkish validation. Convergent validity is good: the A-DES correlates 0.77 with the adult DES in older adolescents, and around 0.55 with therapists' ratings of dissociation.
Discriminant validity is where the evidence is thinner. The scale reliably separates adolescents with dissociative disorders from non-clinical and general psychiatric samples, and separates sexually abused clinical girls from non-clinical girls, but Keck Seeley and colleagues found it did not distinguish adolescents with PTSD from those with other psychiatric diagnoses, and adolescents with psychotic disorders scored almost as high as the dissociative group in the original study. No study has reported sensitivity and specificity at the 4.0 threshold against a structured diagnostic interview.
0.92–0.94
CRONBACH'S α
0.90
SPLIT-HALF RELIABILITY
0.77
TEST–RETEST, 2 WEEKS
0.77
CORRELATION WITH ADULT DES
How it compares to the alternatives.
Instrument
Items
Time
When to reach for it
A-DES
30
~10 min
30-item self-report for ages 11-18, mean score 0-10. Reproduction rights not confirmed, so the items are not shown here.
The adult original (18+). Free to copy for clinical and research use. Use it for older adolescents at or above 18.
DES-B (DSM-5 Severity of Dissociative Symptoms)
8
~3 min
Eight-item APA emerging measure with a child version for ages 11-17; free to reproduce. The quickest alternative when a brief dissociation screen is needed.
CDC (Child Dissociative Checklist)
20
~5 min
20-item parent or carer observer report for children aged 5-12, from the same Putnam group. Use it when the child is too young for self-report.
SDQ-20
20
~5 min
Somatoform dissociation (bodily symptoms) in adults; complements the psychological dissociation the A-DES covers. Free via the author's site.
MID / Adolescent MID
218
45-90 min
218-item comprehensive multiscale assessment for differential diagnosis of dissociative disorders; free for practitioners on request. For assessment, not screening.
Right tool, wrong tool.
Reach for it when
-Screening for dissociative experiences in adolescents aged 11-18 with a history of maltreatment, neglect or other trauma.
-Research on dissociation in adolescent samples, where its high reliability and long publication record give comparability.
-Deciding whether a fuller dissociation assessment (structured interview or MID) is warranted after a high score.
Reach for something else when
-The young person is 18 or over - use the DES-II, which is free and better normed for adults.
-You need a diagnosis - the A-DES has no validated sensitivity or specificity and cannot distinguish dissociative from psychotic or PTSD presentations on its own.
-Tracking change in treatment - no responsiveness or minimal-important-difference data exist.
-Children under about 11, or adolescents who cannot read at that level - use the observer-rated Child Dissociative Checklist.
Reading the score with care.
No published study reports a standard error of measurement or a meaningful-change threshold for the A-DES, so any figure you see is derived rather than validated. Using the reported test-retest reliability of 0.77 and community standard deviations of about 1.4 to 1.8, the standard error of measurement works out at roughly 0.7 to 0.9 points on the 0-10 scale, and a difference between two administrations would need to exceed roughly 2 points before it is unlikely to be noise. A distribution-based half-standard-deviation heuristic gives a "possibly meaningful" change of about 0.9 points, but this has not been anchored to any clinical judgement. Practically: treat a single score as a screen, treat movements of one point or less as within measurement error, and use repeat scores to prompt a conversation rather than as an outcome.
What it cannot tell you.
The A-DES measures dissociation as a continuum that includes ordinary absorption, daydreaming and fantasy proneness, and community adolescents score higher than adults on it - non-clinical means of 2.2 to 2.7 are common and some healthy adolescents exceed 4.0. The four theorised subscales do not hold up in factor analyses, which consistently find a single factor, so subscale scores should not be interpreted. The 4.0 threshold has never been tested against a diagnostic interview, so its sensitivity and specificity are unknown. The scale does not separate PTSD from other psychiatric diagnoses, and adolescents with psychotic disorders score almost as high as those with dissociative disorders, so a high score must be followed by a differential assessment. An eight-item "A-DES-Taxon" circulates in clinician handouts but has no peer-reviewed taxometric study behind it, unlike the adult DES-Taxon. There are no responsiveness data. Finally, reproduction rights have not been confirmed by the authors, so the item text is not published here.
How licensing works.
The A-DES was published by Armstrong, Putnam, Carlson and colleagues in 1997 and is widely reproduced in clinical and research settings, but unlike the adult DES-II its authors have not published a statement placing it in the public domain, and we have not yet confirmed permission to reproduce the item wording on a commercial site. Until that is confirmed the questionnaire is not shown here. Adults (18+) can complete the DES-II, which is free.
Get our case study pack by email, with practical examples from clinical teams.
We will only use your details to send relevant Aisel resources. Unsubscribe at any time.
We value your privacy
We use cookies to analyse site usage and improve your experience. Analytics and embedded media (e.g. YouTube) only load if you accept. Read our cookie policy.