The development of a scale to assess war‐time atrocities: The war events scale

Abstract

The War Events Scale (WES) was developed to assist clinicians with the assessment of war zone veterans' exposure to, and participation in war-time atrocities distinct from combat, and their current distress from these events. Data concerning content validity, test-retest reliability, internal consistency, as well as correlational data with the Combat Exposure Scale and the Mississippi Scale are presented. Results indicate that the WES does have adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability, and correlates moderately with the Combat Exposure and Mississippi Scales. Initial results suggest that the WES may be helpful in collecting extremely sensitive information concerning the exposure of war zone veterans to atrocities.

How to quantify exposure to traumatic stress? Reliability and predictive validity of measures for cumulative trauma exposure in a post-conflict population

“…Strikingly, test–retest reliability over a 1-week interval of the combat exposure scale, which also assesses combat event frequency on a similar Likert scale, was 0.97 in a sample of Vietnam veterans (Keane et al, 1989 ). High retest reliability coefficients of self-reported frequencies of war events and atrocities in a sample of military veterans ( r =0.83–0.87) were also observed by Unger, Gould, and Babich ( 1998 ) over a 4-week interval. Hence, the inconsistent results concerning reliability of self-reported event frequencies warrant further investigation.…”

“…The test–retest interval for the reliability analyses was relatively short, and future research should investigate whether the retrospective reports remain stable over longer time periods. Furthermore, similar to other studies measuring traumatic event frequency (Keane et al, 1989 ; Roemer et al, 1998 ; Unger et al, 1998 ), we assessed traumatic event frequency in categories as opposed to exact event frequencies. This decision was made since we observed that individuals with high trauma exposure had difficulties recalling the exact event frequencies but were able to provide categorical answers.…”

Disorders of extreme stress following war-zone military trauma: Associated features of posttraumatic stress disorder or comorbid but distinct syndromes?

“…However, the war atrocity data suggest still greater complexity in the etiology of DESNOS and PTSD. When the witnessing of atrocities was distinguished from participation in atrocities (Unger et al, 1998), DESNOS and PTSD were differentially related to atrocity exposure. Atrocity participation was a risk factor for DESNOS but not PTSD.…”

Event-list construction and treatment of exposure data in research on political violence

“…The selection and categorization of event-list items in previous research on exposure to political violence have commonly been carried out without an explicitly stated basis; however, from the frequently used strategy of selecting few items as indicators of exposure (e.g., Garbarino & Kostelny, 1996), the use of internal-consistency reliability tests (e.g., Miller et al, 2002;Orcutt, Erickson, & Wolfe, 2004;Roemer, Litz, Orsillo, Ehlich, & Friedman, 1998;Unger, Gould, & Babich, 1998) and application of factor-analytic techniques for item categorization (e.g., Kuterovac-Jagodic, 2003;Macksoud, 1992;Momartin, Silove, Manicavasagar, & Steel, 2002), it is apparent that assessment of exposure to political violence has commonly been based on an effect-indicator measurement model.…”