Principal components analysis of the impact of event scale with children in war

A new 13-item version of the Impact of Event Scale (Horowitz, Wilner, & Alvarez, 1979) was adminstered to 2976 9–14 year old children from Bosnia as part of a large epidemiological screening survey. The IES-13 consists of four intrusion items, four avoidance items, and five new arousal items. Factor analyses showed the scale to have an identical underlying factor structure as when it was used with British children who experienced a single-incident trauma. In addition, there was also a third factor of hyperarousal, closely related to intrusion. These results are discussed in the context of the cross-cultural validity of post traumatic stress reactions in children.

[1]  P. Vostanis,et al.  Post-traumatic Stress Reactions in Children of War , 1999 .

[2]  P. Saigh.  The development of posttraumatic stress disorder following four different types of traumatization. , 1991, Behaviour research and therapy.

[3]  A. Dyregrov,et al.  Children in war: a silent majority under stress. , 1994, The British journal of medical psychology.

[4]  E. Foa,et al.  Arousal, numbing, and intrusion: symptom structure of PTSD following assault. , 1995, The American journal of psychiatry.

[5]  W. Yule.  Post-traumatic stress disorders : concepts and therapy , 1999 .

[6]  R. Matzopoulos.  Rethinking the Trauma of War: Patrick Bracken and Celia Petty. Free Association Books, London, 1998, 200 pp, $15.95 (cloth) , 2000 .

[7]  R. Yehuda,et al.  Basal cortisol, dexamethasone suppression of cortisol, and MHPG in adolescents after the 1988 earthquake in Armenia. , 1996, The American journal of psychiatry.

[8]  M. J. Norušis,et al.  SPSS for UNIX: Base system user's guide, release 5.0 , 1993 .

[9]  R. Velleman,et al.  Psychological screening of children for post-traumatic stress disorder. , 1999, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[10]  B. Bracken,et al.  State of the Art Procedures for Translating, Validating and Using Psychoeducational Tests in Cross-Cultural Assessment , 1991 .

[11]  M. Horowitz,et al.  Impact of Event Scale: A Measure of Subjective Stress , 1979, Psychosomatic medicine.

[12]  C. G. Watson,et al.  A factor analysis of the DSM-III post-traumatic stress disorder criteria. , 1991, Journal of clinical psychology.

[13]  J. Seeley,et al.  Psychometric properties of the impact of events scale in traumatized Cambodian refugee youth , 1998 .

[14]  S. Manson,et al.  The Psychiatric Effects of Massive Trauma on Cambodian Children: I. The Children , 1986 .

[15]  S. Perrin,et al.  War Exposure Among Children from Bosnia-Hercegovina: Psychological Adjustment in a Community Sample , 2002, Journal of traumatic stress.

[16]  W. Yule,et al.  Principal components analysis of the impact of events scale in adolescents who survived a shipping disaster , 1994 .

[17]  D. Summerfield.  The social, cultural and political dimensions of contemporary war. , 1997, Medicine, conflict, and survival.

[18]  J. Seeley,et al.  Does PTSD transcend cultural barriers? A study from the Khmer Adolescent Refugee Project. , 1997, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[19]  A. Dyregrov,et al.  Factor analysis of the impact of event scale with children in war. , 1996, Scandinavian journal of psychology.

[20]  W. Reich,et al.  Reliability, validity, and parent-child agreement studies of the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents (DICA). , 1987, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.