The structure of post-traumatic stress symptoms in survivors of war: confirmatory factor analyses of the Impact of Event Scale--revised

The study aimed at establishing the factor structure of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) in survivors of war. A total sample of 4167 participants with potentially traumatic experiences during the war in Ex-Yugoslavia was split into three samples: two independent samples of people who stayed in the area of conflict and one sample of refugees to Western European countries. Alternative models with three, four, and five factors of post-traumatic symptoms were tested in one sample. The other samples were used for cross-validation. Results indicated that the model of best fit had five factors, i.e., intrusion, avoidance, hyperarousal, numbing, and sleep disturbance. Model superiority was cross-validated in the two other samples. These findings suggest a five-factor model of post-traumatic stress symptoms in war survivors with numbing and sleep disturbance as separate factors in addition to intrusion, avoidance and hyperarousal.