Citation

Bovin MJ, Schneiderman A, Bernhard PA, Maguen S, Hoffmire CA, Blosnich JR, Smith BN, Kulka R, Vogt D. Psychol. Trauma 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/tra0001282

PMID

35653745

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: It is important to assess warfare experiences beyond direct combat exposure, as these exposures can negatively impact military veterans' health. Although two validated scales from the Deployment Risk and Resilience Inventory-2 [DRRI-2] together capture a broad range of stressful warfare experiences, the length of this combined measure (30 items) is prohibitively long for some settings. Therefore, the goal of this project was to develop and validate a short form Warfare Exposure measure (DRRI-2-WE-SF).

METHOD: U.S. veterans deployed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan completed questionnaires across 2 studies (study 1, N = 1046; study 2, N = 7141) to develop and validate the DRRI-2 WE-SF.

RESULTS: Study 1 involved developing the DRRI-2 WE-SF, a 9-item self-report instrument with strong internal consistency (α =.86) and large correlations with the full Warfare Exposure measure (r =.97). In study 2, the DRRI-2 WE-SF again demonstrated high levels of reliability and validity and evidenced high levels of classification accuracy (89.7% correct classification) and significant time savings (all ts > 39; all ps <.05) in comparison to the full measure.

CONCLUSIONS: The DRRI-2 WE-SF is a psychometrically sound measure of direct exposures to warfare and its consequences. This measure of proximal warfare exposure retains the strong properties of the full measure while significantly reducing completion time. These properties make the DRRI-2 WE-SF a useful tool for efficiently evaluating proximal warfare exposure among individuals who have served in both combat and noncombat roles. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en