title: The centrality of event scale: a measure of integrating a trauma into one's identity and its relation to post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.
abstract: We introduce a new scale that measures how central an event is to a person's identity and life story. For the most stressful or traumatic event in a person's life, the full 20-item Centrality of Event Scale (CES) and the short 7-item scale are reliable (alpha's of .94 and .88, respectively) in a sample of 707 undergraduates. The scale correlates .38 with PTSD symptom severity and .23 with depression. The present findings are discussed in relation to previous work on individual differences related to PTSD symptoms. Possible connections between the CES and measures of maladaptive attributions and rumination are considered along with suggestions for future research.
authors.affiliation: Department of psychology, University of Aarhus, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. dorthe@psy.au.dk
authors.forename: Dorthe
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Berntsen
authors.forename: David C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Rubin
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012933:Social Identification; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000523:psychology*