Merckelbach H, Langeland W, de Vries G, Draijer N. Symptom overreporting obscures the dose-response relationship between trauma severity and symptoms.
Psychiatry Res 2014;
217:215-9. [PMID:
24704260 DOI:
10.1016/j.psychres.2014.03.018]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/06/2013] [Revised: 01/27/2014] [Accepted: 03/14/2014] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
Abstract
We investigated whether symptom overreporting affects the dose-response relationship between self-reported abuse severity and psychiatric symptoms in two samples. The first sample (N=599) consisted of adults who had previously reported to a public commission that they had been witnesses to or victims of childhood sexual abuse by Roman Catholic Church representatives. The second sample (N=1756) consisted of general population respondents who indicated that they had been victims of non-familial childhood sexual abuse. Using a web-based data collection procedure, both samples completed the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI-18), items addressing abuse severity, and items flagging symptom overreporting. Adjusting for overreporting reduced the proportion of participants with clinically raised BSI-18 scores from 60% to 47% in sample 1 and from 26% to 22% in sample 2. Also, in both samples, normal range reporting participants exhibited the typical dose-response relationship between trauma severity and BSI-18 scores, whereas this pattern was largely non-significant in overreporting participants. Our findings show that symptom overreporting has a psychometric impact that may obscure relationships between clinically relevant variables and should therefore preferably be monitored in surveys.
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