A timely determination of the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prerequisite for efficient service delivery and prevention. We provide a risk estimate tool allowing a calculation of individuals' PTSD likelihood from early predictors. Members of the International Consortium to Predict PTSD (ICPP) shared individual participants' item-level data from ten longitudinal studies of civilian trauma survivors admitted to acute care centers in six countries. Eligible participants (N=2,473) completed an initial clinical assessment within 60 days of trauma exposure, and at least one follow-up assessment 4-15 months later. The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-IV (CAPS) evaluated PTSD symptom severity and diagnostic status at each assessment. Participants' education, prior lifetime trauma exposure, marital status and socio-economic status were assessed and harmonized across studies. The study's main outcome was the likelihood of a follow-up PTSD given early predictors. The prevalence of follow-up PTSD was 11.8% (9.2% for male participants and 16.4% for females). A logistic model using early PTSD symptom severity (initial CAPS total score) as a predictor produced remarkably accurate estimates of . Adding respondents' female gender, lower education, and exposure to prior interpersonal trauma to the model yielded higher PTSD likelihood estimates, with similar model accuracy (predicted vs. raw probabilities: r=0.941). The current model could be adjusted for other traumatic circumstances and accommodate risk factors not captured by the ICPP (e.g., biological, social). In line with their use in general medicine, risk estimate models can inform clinical choices in psychiatry. It is hoped that quantifying individuals' PTSD risk will be a first step towards systematic prevention of the disorder.

Hutu extremist] organizers of the [Rwandan] genocide, who had themselves grown up with. .. distortions of history, skillfully exploited misconceptions about who the Tutsi were, where they had come from, and what they had done in the past. From these elements, they fueled the fear and hatred that made genocide imaginable.

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This article explores the question of why competent evaluators award the ratings they do to college students' expository essays. Essays were rewritten to be stronger or weaker in four categories: content, organization, sentence structure, and mechanics. Twelve evaluators first used a 4-point holistic rating scale to judge the essays' quality. Then they rated whether each of the four rewriting categories in each rewritten essay was strong or weak (perceptions). Analyses of variance revealed content and organization to affect ratings most (p < .001). Mechanics and sentence structure had smaller effects, which differed when measured by the actual rewriting versus by the perceptions. Mechanics and sentence structure were significant in their interaction with organization (p < .001 andp < .01, respectively).Very little is known about the process of evaluating students' writing. Most past research on composition evaluation has been correlational rather than experimental. In the usual correlational study in this area, students write papers and teacher-judges rate the quality of the papers. The researcher then examines the paper or the judges for traits associated with high and low ratings. One type of past correlational study (e.g., Killer, Marcotte, & Martin, 1969;Nold & Freedman, 1977;Page, 1968;Slotnick & Knapp, 1971; Thompson, Note 1) attempted to predict ratings with measures of characteristics in the student papers, such as the number of spelling errors or the length of the essay. Another type (e.g., Diederich, French, &Carlton, 1961, andMeyers, McConville, &Coffman, 1966) sought to account for ratings with characteristics of the judges, such as their personal biases or their degree of leniency. The past studies show that characteristics of papers and of judges This article is based on my doctoral dissertation, Influences on the Evaluators of Student Writing, Stanford University, 1977. The research was supported in part by a grant from the Procter and Gamble Foundation. Special thanks go to Robert Calfee, who spent many hours helping me with all aspects of this study, from its inception to the reporting of the results.Requests for reprints should be sent to Sarah Warshauer Freedman,