Ukrainian-Language Version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI-UA): Adaptation and Psychometric Validation
Abstract
Objective. The aim of this study was to adapt the original Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996) for the Ukrainian-speaking and to develop its Ukrainian version—the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory–Ukrainian (PTGI-UA)—for practical application in psychological work with military personnel, veterans, and individuals with combat experience. Methods. The study involved a full translation and cultural adaptation of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory into Ukrainian, followed by an evaluation of its psychometric properties. The translation process included standard forward- and back-translation procedures. The study sample consisted of 508 male military personnel. The initial sample also included female participants (n = 27); however, due to substantial gender imbalance and in order to ensure the validity of statistical analyses, data from female participants were excluded from further analyses. Statistical procedures included descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), assessment of internal consistency, evaluation of convergent and discriminant validity, and testing of measurement invariance.
Results. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the hierarchical structure of the Ukrainian version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI-UA). In this model, posttraumatic growth was represented as a second-order latent factor encompassing five first-order factors: personal strength, new possibilities, improved relationships, spiritual growth, and appreciation of life. Model fit indices indicated a high level of correspondence between the theoretical model and the empirical data (CFI = 0.997, TLI = 0.996, SRMR = 0.041, RMSEA = 0.053). Conclusion. The Ukrainian version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI-UA) meets established criteria for reliability and validity and can be recommended for use among Ukrainian-speaking military personnel and veterans in both clinical practice and research settings. Further validation is advised for other populations.
Downloads
References
Olefir, V. O., & Bosniuk, V. F. (2023). Adaptation of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-12S). Insight: the psychological dimensions of society, 9, 50–71. https://doi.org/10.32999/KSU2663-970Х/2023-9-4 [in Ukrainian]
Zubrovskyi, D. S. (2018). Adaptation and validation of the Ukrainian version of the “Posttraumatic Growth Inventory”. Psychological Journal, 7(17), 121–135. https://doi.org/10.31108/1.2018.7.17.8 [in Ukrainian]
Affleck, G., & Tennen, H. (1996). Constructing Benefits from Adversity: Adaptational Significance and Dispositional Underpinnings. Journal of Personality, 64, 899–922. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1996.tb00948.x
Aldwin, C.M. (1994). Stress, coping, and development: An integrative perspective. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Aldwin, C.M. (2007). Stress, coping, and development: An integrative perspective (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Bandalos, D.L. (2018). Measurement theory and applications for the social sciences. Guilford Press.
Bao, H.-W.-S. (2023). bruceR: Broadly useful convenient and efficient R functions (Version 0.7.0) [R package]. CRAN. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.bruceR
Békés, V., Luszczynska, A., Benyamini, Y., Saffon, S., Lin, L., Vîrgă, D., & Benight, C. C. (2022). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-cultural examination. BMC Psychology, 10(1), 68. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-022-00735-5
Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.20
Chen, F. F. (2007). Sensitivity of goodness of fit indexes to lack of measurement invariance. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 14(3), 464–504. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705510701301834
Cheung, G. W., & Rensvold, R. B. (2002). Evaluating goodness-of-fit indexes for testing measurement invariance. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 9(2), 233–255. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15328007SEM0902_5
DeVellis, R. F. (2016). Scale development: Theory and applications (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Dunn, T. J., Baguley, T., & Brunsden, V. (2013). From alpha to omega: A practical solution to the pervasive problem of internal consistency estimation. British Journal of Psychology, 105(3), 399–412. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12046
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.2307/3151312
Garrido-Hernansaiz, H., Rodríguez-Rey, R., Collazo-Castiñeira, P., & Collado, S. (2022). The posttraumatic growth inventory-short form (PTGI-SF): A psychometric study of the Spanish population during the COVID-19 pandemic. Current Psychology, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02645-z
George, D. (2003). SPSS for Windows step by step: A simple guide and reference (4th ed., 11.0 update). Allyn & Bacon.
Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2010). Multivariate data analysis (7th ed.). Pearson Education.
Henseler, J., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2015). A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(1), 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-014-0403-8
Ho, S. M., Chan, C. L., Ho. R. T. (2004). Posttraumatic growth in Chinese cancer survivors. Psycho Oncology, 6(13), 377-389.
Horswill, S. C., Desgagné, G., Parkerson, H. A., Carleton, R. N., & Asmundson, G. J. G. (2016). A psychometric evaluation of hierarchical and oblique versions of five variants of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Psychiatry Research, 246, 438–446. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2016.10.027
Hu, L., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
Jaarsma, T. A. (2006) Psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the posttraumatic growth inventory among cancer patients. Psycho Oncology. 10(15), 911-920.
Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0029160154.
Jorgensen, T. D., Pornprasertmanit, S., Schoemann, A. M., & Rosseel, Y. (2021). semTools: Useful tools for structural equation modeling. R package version 0.5-4. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=semTools
Joseph, S., Williams, R., & Yule, W. (1993). Changes in outlook following disaster: The preliminary development of a measure to assess positive and negative responses. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 6, 271-279
Joseph, S., & Linley, P. A. (2005). Positive adjustment to threatening events: An organismic valuing theory of growth through adversity. Review of General Psychology, 9(3), 262–280. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.9.3.262
Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.
Li, C.-H. (2015). Confirmatory factor analysis with ordinal data: Comparing robust maximum likelihood and diagonally weighted least squares. Behavior Research Methods, 48(3), 936–949. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-015-0619-7
Luthans, F., Youssef-Morgan C. M., Avolio B. J. (2015). Psychological Capital and Beyond. New York : Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 336.
Maercker, A., Langner, R. (2001) Persönliche Reifung (personal growth) durch Belastungen und Traumata: Validierung zweier deutschsprachiger Fragebogenversionen. Diagnostica, 3(47), 153-162.
Maercker, A., & Zoellner, T. (2004). The Janus face of self-perceived growth: Toward a two-component model of posttraumatic growth. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 41–48.
McDonald, R. P. (1999). Test Theory: A Unified Treatment. Psychology Press. http://doi.org/10.4324/9781410601087
McMillen, J.C., & Fisher, R.H. (1998). The Perceived Benefit Scales: Measuring perceived positive life changes after negative events. Social Work Research, 22, 173-187.
Morris, B. A., Shakespeare-Finch, J., Rieck, M., & Newbery, J. (2005). Multidimensional nature of posttraumatic growth in an Australian population. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 18(5), 575–585. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.20067
Morris, B. A., Shakespeare-Finch, J., & Scott, J. L. (2009). Posttraumatic growth after cancer: The importance of health-related benefits and agency.Psycho Oncology, 18(12), 1255–1263. https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.1523
Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
O'Leary, V. E., & Ickovics, J. (1995). Resilience and Thriving in Response to Challenge: An Overview. In J. W. Reich, A. J. Zautra, & J. S. Hall (Eds.), Handbook of Adult Resilience (pp. 3–28). New York: Guilford Press.
Park, C.L., Cohen, L.H., & Murch, R. (1996). Assessment and prediction of stress-related growth. Journal of Personality, 64, 71-105.
Park, C. L., & Folkman, S. (1997). Meaning in the context of stress and coping. Review of General Psychology, 1(2), 115–144. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.1.2.115
Pietrzak, R. H., Goldstein, M. B., Malley, J. C., Rivers, A. J., Johnson, D. C., Morgan, C. A., & Southwick, S. M. (2010). Posttraumatic growth in Veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Journal of Affective Disorders, 126(1–2), 230–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2010.03.021
Powell, S., Rosner, R., Butollo, W., Tedeschi, R. G., Calhoun, L. G. (2003). Posttraumatic growth after war: A study with former refugees and displaced people in Sarajevo. Journal of clinical psychology, 1(59), 71-83.
R Core Team. (2024). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/
Rhemtulla, M., Brosseau-Liard, P. É., & Savalei, V. (2012). When can categorical variables be treated as continuous? A comparison of robust continuous and categorical SEM estimation methods under suboptimal conditions. Psychological Methods, 17(3), 354–373. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029315
Rosseel, Y. (2012). Lavaan: An R Package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02
RStudio Team. (2023). RStudio: Integrated Development Environment for R. Posit Software, PBC. https://posit.co/
Schaefer, J. A., & Moos, R. H. (1992). Life crises and personal growth. In B. N. Carpenter (Ed.), Personal coping: Theory, research, and application (pp. 149–170). Westport, CT: Praeger.
Szymanski, K. (2017). Trauma. In The sage encyclopedia of abnormal and clinical psychology, 7. 3593-3593. SAGE Publications, Inc., https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483365817.n1434
Svetina, D., Rutkowski, L., & Rutkowski, D. (2019). Multiple-Group invariance with categorical outcomes using updated guidelines: An illustration using mplus and the lavaan/semtools packages. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 27(1), 111–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705511.2019.1602776
Taku, K., Calhoun, L. G., Tedeschi, R. G., & Cann, A. (2007). Examining posttraumatic growth among Ja-panese university students. Anxiety, stress, and coping. 4(20). 353-367.
Taylor, S. E. (1983). Adjustment to threatening events: A theory of cognitive adaptation. American Psychologist, 38(11), 1161–1173. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.38.11.1161
Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01
Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The posttraumatic growth inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9(3), 455–471. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.2490090305
Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1995). Trauma & transformation: Growing in the aftermath of suffering. Sage Publications.
Tennen, H., & Affleck, G. (2002). Benefit–finding and benefit–reminding. In Snyder, C.R. & Lopez, S. (Eds.), Handbook of Positive Psychology (pp. 584–597). Oxford University Press.
Updegraff, J. A., Taylor, S. E., Kemeny, M. E., & Wyatt, G. E. (2002). Positive and Negative Effects of HIV Infection in Women With Low Socioeconomic Resources. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 382–394.
Vandenberg, R. J., & Lance, C. E. (2000). A review and synthesis of the measurement invariance literature: Suggestions, practices, and recommendations for organizational research. Organizational Research Methods, 3(1), 4–70. https://doi.org/10.1177/109442810031002
Zumbo, B. D., Gadermann, A. M., & Zeisser, C. (2007). Ordinal versions of coefficients alpha and theta for likert rating scales. Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods, 6(1), 21–29. https://doi.org/10.22237/jmasm/1177992180
