Many researchers believe that Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) may be a chronic condition, and that effective treatment must involve teaching the patient coping skills to manage his or her symptoms. The importance of such skills is also suggested by reviews of treatment programs designed for this disorder: They typically direct intervention toward the development of skills to cope with PTSD as well as to the underlying symptomology. The present study describes the initial stages in the development of the PTSD Coping Inventory (PCI); a tool for evaluating the acquisition of coping skills specific to combat related PTSD. In Phase I of this study a previously developed 50-item PTSD coping inventory was refined and reduced using data from a sample of 121 PTSD diagnosed veterans. Phase II consisted of re-administering the resulting 35-item inventory to a sample of 90 PTSD diagnosed combat veterans. Additional data reduction resulted in a 24-item inventory for which psychometric properties were examined. The measure as a whole yielded adequate reliability and correlated predictably with a number of related measures. While additional refinement of the scale is suggested—including further examination of the underlying factor structure—the PCI shows promise as a psychometrically sound instrument for measuring PTSD coping skills in combat veterans.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-3505 |
| Date | 01 January 2001 |
| Creators | Hunt, Sandra L |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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