Posttraumatic growth (PTG; positive change resulting from the struggle with trauma) was examined among children impacted by Hurricane Katrina. The revised Posttraumatic Growth Inventory for Children (PTGI-C-R) assessed PTG at two time points, 12 (T1) and 22 months (T2) posthurricane. The PTGI-C-R demonstrated good reliability. Analyses focused on trauma-related variables in predicting PTG. Child-reported subjective responses to the hurricane and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) correlated with PTG at T1; however, in the regression, only PTSS significantly explained variance in PTG. At follow-up, T1 PTG was the only significant predictor of PTG. Findings suggest that the PTGI-C-R may assist efforts to understand children's responses posttrauma.Although posttraumatic growth (PTG), positive change resulting from one's struggle with trauma, has garnered considerable interest in the adult literature , the construct has received less attention among nonadults (Kilmer, 2006). As such, there is no clear standard for measurement in children and youth. Nevertheless, PTG has been reported in youth exposed to diverse traumas, including disasters (Cryder, Kilmer, Tedeschi, & Calhoun, 2006). In this article, we describe the revised Posttraumatic Growth Inventory for Children (PTGI-C-R) and correlates of PTG. This adaptation of the PTGI-C (Cryder et al., 2006) shortened the scale and simplified the response metric and item wording to facilitate efficient assessment of PTG in clinical and research settings.This study grows out of a project assessing children and caregivers post-Hurricane Katrina. Describing the sample's experiences, Gil-Rivas, Kilmer, Hypes, and Roof (in press) noted that 86.8% endorsed experiencing at least one hurricane-related trauma, and 63.2% of children reported that Katrina was one of the "most scary" events they had experienced. Overall, children and families reported substantial adversity and, one-year post-Katrina, 21% of children obtained scores suggesting probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); nearly all reported experiencing at least one posttraumatic stress symptom much or most of the time during the previous month.We expected that (a) the PTGI-C-R would demonstrate good reliability at baseline (T1) and follow-up (T2), and that a meaningful proportion of children would evidence growth; (b) at T1, indicators of subjective response to the hurricane and ongoing distress i.e. posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) would relate positively to PTG, over and above objective exposure; and (c) given the hypothesized role of distress in catalyzing the process that yields (and perhaps maintains) growth, T1 levels of PTSS and PTG would predict T2 PTG.
METHOD ParticipantsFace-to-face interviews were conducted with children (aged 7-10 years) and their primary caregivers in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans, LA metropolitan areas and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Baseline interviews were conducted roughly one year posthurricane (M = 12.4 months, SD = 3.4); follow-ups were approximately 2 years posth...
