title: Development and validation of a self-report for the assessment of adjustment disorders.
abstract: Based on a recent diagnostic proposal for adjustment disorders a self-report assessment was developed. The current study reports validation results. Psychometric properties were examined using two different samples of 687 patients with cardiac arrhythmias and 86 patients from a psychosomatic outpatient clinic. Besides evaluating the internal structure and re-test reliability, associations with quality of life, general anxiety and depression, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and coping strategies were analyzed. The factor analysis confirmed the three postulated factors: intrusion, avoidance and failure to adapt. The internal consistencies for these three scales were between α = 0.74 and 0.91. The re-rest reliability of the scales for a six-week period lay between r(tt) = 0.61 and 0.84. Medium-sized correlations were found between the scales with general anxiety and depression as well as posttraumatic stress disorder. Furthermore, the scales correlated with emotion-oriented and somewhat with proactive coping, but not with task-oriented or avoidance-oriented coping strategies. It is concluded that the self-report on adjustment disorders enables new possibilities to investigate further previously under-researched adjustment disorders.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, Technical University Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Franziska
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Einsle
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Köllner
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dannemann
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Maercker
mesh_terms: D000275:Adjustment Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*