title: Diagnostic utility of the impact of event scale-revised in two samples of survivors of war.
abstract: The study aimed at examining the diagnostic utility of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) as a screening tool for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in survivors of war. The IES-R was completed by two independent samples that had survived the war in the Balkans: a sample of randomly selected people who had stayed in the area of former conflict (n = 3,313) and a sample of refugees to Western European countries (n = 854). PTSD was diagnosed using the MINI International Neuropsychiatric Interview. Prevalence of PTSD was 20.1% in the Balkan sample and 33.1% in the refugee sample. Results revealed that when considering a minimum value of specificity of 0.80, the optimally sensitive cut-off score for screening for PTSD in the Balkan sample was 34. In both the Balkan sample and the refugee sample, this cut-off score provided good values on sensitivity (0.86 and 0.89, respectively) and overall efficiency (0.81 and 0.79, respectively). Further, the kappa coefficients for sensitivity for the cut-off of 34 were 0.80 in both samples. Findings of this study support the clinical utility of the IES-R as a screening tool for PTSD in large-scale research studies and intervention studies if structured diagnostic interviews are regarded as too labor-intensive and too costly.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Nexhmedin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Morina
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ehring
authors.affiliation: Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry, Barts' and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Priebe
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D063368:Balkan Peninsula; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012372:ROC Curve; D012036:Refugees / Q000523:psychology*; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*; D017741:Survivors / Q000523:psychology*; D014857:Warfare; D055815:Young Adult