Posttraumatic Growth and Disability: On Happiness, Positivity, and Meaning (original) (raw)

The field of psychology has traditionally focused on the deleterious effects of adversity to the exclusion of positive effects. However, a literature on positive sequelae of traumatic events has burgeoned over the past decade. The issue of whether individual's reports of positive changes are merely illusory self-enhancing biases or are reflective of objective, quantifiable change is perhaps the most contentious in the posttraumatic growth research at this time. This Posttraumatic Growth Assessment Researchers have explored the phenomenon of posttraumatic growth by using both qualitative and quantitative measures. Both types of measures have strong face validity, are easy to administer, and are readily accepted by research participants (Tennen & Affleck, 2009). However, measures of PTG are not without their flaws, and like all scales that rely on self-report, are subject to bias. Qualitative Methods Early studies of growth typically used an interview format with open-ended questions that asked people how their lives had changed in response to a traumatic event (Park & Helgeson, 2006). Interviews often specifically targeted positive life changes resulting from the event (Davis et al., 1998). For example, in an early study of perceived benefits following heart attack, participants were asked "As difficult as it's been, have there been any benefits or gains that wouldn't have occurred if you hadn't experienced the heart attack?" (Affleck, Tennen, Croog, & Levine, 1987). Responses to interview questions were usually categorized into domains of PTG by post hoc statistical analyses. In the analyses, authors determined whether or not there had been any benefit and, in separate analyses, rated the number of reported benefits (Zoellner & Maercker, 2006). Quantitative Methods The number of instruments that have been published as quantitative measures of PTG is steadily growing, with at least 14 in use at the time of this writing. Among these, the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996) and the Stress-Related Growth Scale (SRGS; Park et al., 1996) have undergone the most psychometric development (Zoellner & Maercker, 2006). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory is a 21-item self-report