The assessment of psychopathology among traumatized refugees: measurement invariance of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 across five linguistic groups.

ABSTRACT: Background: Questionnaires are widely used to assess the mental health status of refugees, whereas their construct validity largely remains unexplored. Objective: This study examined the construct validity of two widely-used instruments for the assessment of PTSD symptoms (Harvard Trauma Questionnaire [HTQ]; 16 items) and symptoms of anxiety and depression (Hopkins Symptom Check list-25 [HSCL-25]; 25 items) among Dutch and refugee patients with different linguistic backgrounds. Method: We applied exploratory factor analyses and measurement invariance analyses to test construct validity.Participants (n =1 256) were divided into five linguistic groups defined by language family, including four non-western linguistic groups (Indo-Iranian [n = 262], Niger-Con

SUBMITTER: Wind TR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5632793 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature