Department of Psychology.
Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice.
Psychol Trauma. 2020 May;12(4):389-396. doi: 10.1037/tra0000509. Epub 2019 Aug 29.
Many sexual assault victims develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after their assault, the symptoms of which can last for months or years. Although severity of PTSD symptoms generally decreases over time, it is unclear whether symptom clusters decrease at a consistent pace or whether certain symptom clusters resolve more quickly than do others. Put in terms of measurement invariance, do all symptom clusters maintain stable contributions to the underlying construct of PTSD over time? This article responds to that question by analyzing longitudinal data collected from a diverse sample of sexual assault survivors.
We conducted a longitudinal confirmatory factor analysis to assess measurement invariance of the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale. We also tested the impact of time since the assault and revictimization between measurement occasions on posttraumatic stress symptoms.
Results indicated that although 3 out of 4 symptom clusters remained stable, the contribution of the dysphoria symptom cluster to the latent factor of PTSD varied over time. Findings also suggested that whereas time since the assault was not a significant predictor of posttraumatic stress symptoms, revictimization between Wave 1 and Wave 2 surveys did predict posttraumatic stress at the 2nd measurement occasion.
Trauma researchers and practitioners are advised to monitor item-level movement on dysphoria scales rather than focus on the average cluster score, because items in this symptom cluster may change in a less predictable way than do items in other symptom clusters. Lack of attention to this issue may lead to inaccurate or incomplete conclusions about how PTSD symptom clusters evolve over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
许多性侵犯受害者在遭受侵犯后会患上创伤后应激障碍（PTSD），其症状可能会持续数月或数年。尽管 PTSD 症状的严重程度通常会随着时间的推移而减轻，但尚不清楚症状群是否以一致的速度减少，或者某些症状群是否比其他症状群更快地得到解决。从测量不变性的角度来看，所有症状群是否随着时间的推移对 PTSD 的潜在结构保持稳定的贡献？本文通过分析从不同样本的性侵犯幸存者中收集的纵向数据来回答这个问题。
我们进行了纵向验证性因素分析，以评估创伤后应激诊断量表的测量不变性。我们还测试了自袭击以来的时间和测量时之间的再受害对创伤后应激症状的影响。
结果表明，尽管 4 个症状群中有 3 个保持稳定，但失调症状群对 PTSD 潜在因素的贡献随时间而变化。研究结果还表明，虽然自袭击以来的时间不是创伤后应激症状的显著预测因素，但第 1 波和第 2 波调查之间的再受害确实预测了第 2 次测量时的创伤后应激。
建议创伤研究人员和从业者监测失调量表上的项目级移动，而不是关注平均聚类得分，因为与其他症状群中的项目相比，该症状群中的项目可能以不太可预测的方式变化。如果不注意这个问题，可能会导致关于 PTSD 症状群如何随时间演变的不准确或不完整的结论。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。
