Kaler Matthew E, Frazier Patricia A, Anders Samantha L, Tashiro Ty, Tomich Patricia, Tennen Howard, Park Crystal
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
J Trauma Stress. 2008 Jun;21(3):326-32. doi: 10.1002/jts.20343.
The notion that traumatic events shatter survivors' fundamental assumptions about the world has been accepted as a truism in the trauma literature, although tests of this hypothesis provide a somewhat mixed picture. Because this research has relied heavily on the World Assumptions Scale (WAS), it is unclear whether these inconsistent results are due to problems with assumptive world theory, improper tests of the theory, or problems with the WAS. Data were gathered from 742 undergraduate students at four universities to assess the psychometric properties of the WAS. Findings suggest several shortcomings of the WAS, including temporal instability, and mixed evidence regarding construct validity. Implications for trauma research are discussed.
创伤性事件会打破幸存者对世界的基本假设这一观点，在创伤文献中已被视为不言而喻的真理，尽管对这一假设的检验结果喜忧参半。由于这项研究严重依赖世界假设量表（WAS），目前尚不清楚这些不一致的结果是由于假设世界理论本身的问题、该理论的测试不当，还是WAS量表本身存在问题。研究人员从四所大学的742名本科生中收集数据，以评估WAS量表的心理测量特性。研究结果表明WAS量表存在若干缺陷，包括时间稳定性不足，以及在结构效度方面的证据不一。本文还讨论了这些结果对创伤研究的启示。
