Measurement Invariance of the Brief Symptom Inventory in Survivors of Torture and Trauma

The United States accepts more refugees than any other industrialized nation. As refugee populations grow, mental health professionals must implement culturally and ethnically appropriate strategies to assess and treat individuals from diverse backgrounds. 

Culture can exert a powerful and often misunderstood influence on psychological assessment, and few structured measures have been demonstrated to have adequate cross-cultural validity for use with diverse and vulnerable populations such as survivors of torture. 

This study examined the factor structure and equivalency of underlying construct(s) of psychological distress as measured by the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) in three samples who had survived torture and other severe trauma from Tibet, West Africa and the Punjab region of India. Confirmatory factor analyses provided support for configural invariance of a two-factor model across the three samples, suggesting that the two latent factors of Complex Dysphoria and Somatic Distress were present in each subgroup. 

The data provide additional support for the strict invariance model in the West African–Tibetan dyad suggesting that scores are comparable across those two groups. Implications for research and treatment are discussed.

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By:   Sumithra S. Raghavan1⇑, Barry Rosenfeld2, Andrew Rasmussen2

¹College of Mount Saint Vincent (https://www.mountsaintvincent.edu/), Bronx, NY, USA

²Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA

Sumithra S. Raghavan, College of Mount Saint Vincent, Founders Hall Room 429, 6301 Riverdale Avenue, Bronx, NY 10458, USA. Email:Sumithra.raghavan@mountsaintvincent.edu

J Interpers Violence December 27, 2015 0886260515619750

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