M.A., Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatwersrand, 2011 / Posttraumatic growth has been an ongoing area of interest in the field of positive psychology.
In recent years posttraumatic growth has been linked with the presence of posttraumatic
stress symptomatology. The existence of posttraumatic growth has been validated in a
number of cultures. There are certain domains that have been implicated in the construction
of the phenomenon which taps into different aspects of people’s lives like relating to others,
personal strength, new possibilities and appreciation of life. Particular interest has risen with
regard to whether this phenomenon develops as a function of ethnic and cultural influences.
This study aimed to investigate whether there are differences in posttraumatic growth and
posttraumatic stress symptoms as a function of ethnocultural identity. This was investigated
by the use of self-report measures of MEIM (Phinney, 1992), Traumatic Stress Schedule
(Norris, 1990), Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996) and the Impact
of Events Scale Revised (Weiss & Marmar, 1997). The sample consisted of 80 students from
the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, at the
University of Witwatersrand. Results of the multivariate analysis showed that ethnocultural
identity interacts with ethnicity to moderate posttraumatic stress symptoms. Specifically,
findings suggested that Black South African and Indian students who identified with their
ethnocultural heritage, reported fewer PTSD symptoms. Whereas the converse was true for
White South Africans and Black Africans from other countries. The more they adopted
ethnoculturally informed beliefs, the more likely they were to report symptoms of PTSD.
There were no significant findings regarding ethnocultural identity in relation to
posttraumatic growth. Implications for further research and clinical intervention are
discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/11433 |
| Date | 14 March 2012 |
| Creators | Moeti, Sannah |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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