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The Impact of Event Scale – Revised: psychometric properties of the Italian version in a sample of flood victims

Authors Craparo G, Faraci P , Rotondo G, Gori A

Received 19 July 2013

Accepted for publication 31 July 2013

Published 19 September 2013 Volume 2013:9 Pages 1427—1432

DOI https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S51793

Checked for plagiarism Yes

Review by Single anonymous peer review

Peer reviewer comments 2



Giuseppe Craparo,1 Palmira Faraci,1 Giuseppe Rotondo,2 Alessio Gori3

1Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, University of Enna Kore, Italy; 2Department of Psychology, Unit of Psychotraumatology, San Raffaele Giglio Hospital of Cefalù, Italy; 3Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Italy

Background: This study aims to verify the main psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Impact of Event Scale – Revised (IES-R) in a sample of flood victims.
Methods: The sample was composed of 262 subjects involved in the natural disaster of 2009 in the city of Messina (Italy). All participants completed the IES-R and the Dissociative Experiences Scale-II (DES-II) in order to verify some aspects of convergent validity.
Results: The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, used to verify the construct validity of the measure, showed a clear factor structure with three independent dimensions: intrusion, avoidance, and hyper-arousal. The goodness-of-fit indices (non-normed fit index [NNFI] = 0.99; comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.99; standardized root mean square residual [SRMR] = 0.04; and root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.02) indicated a good adaptation of the model to the data. The IES-R scales showed satisfactory values of internal consistency (intrusion, α = 0.78; avoidance, α = 0.72; hyper-arousal, α = 0.83) and acceptable values of correlation with the DES-II.
Conclusion: These results suggest that this self-reported and easily administered instrument for assessing the dimensions of trauma has good psychometric properties and can be adopted usefully, both for research and for practice in Italy.

Keywords: IES-R, PTSD, dissociation

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