Trauma, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Clusters, and Article Critique

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Trauma, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Clusters, And Physical Health Symptoms in Postabused Women

Stephanie J. Woods and N. Margaret Wineman

The purpose of this research is to evaluate PTSD symptom clusters (avoidance of the situation, hyper-arousal, and intrusions) to physical health symptoms in women who have suffered abuse. The researchers are also interested in how lifetime trauma is related to the PTSD symptom clusters and physical health symptoms. The researchers make a fair case for the aims of the current study by pointing out that the majority of previous research investigating these relationships has been performed on male combat veterans (although they do discuss research with female veterans) and that a significant proportion of women in abusive relationships suffer from PTSD. Here you might be tempted to draw the conclusion that if PTSD war veterans experience health symptoms so should abused women, but this might not follow. Moreover, they do discuss inadequacies in past research and how it has not definitively demonstrated the relationship between the PTSD clusters and health symptoms.

The independent variable (IV) in the study is actually a bit hard to define. We would think that the major IV is having the symptoms of PTSD based on a history of abuse from a partner. However, this study takes an interesting turn by hypothesizing that a history of lifetime trauma affects the development of PTSD, which in turn is hypothesized to effect health. So in essence PTSD (positive or negative) is treated as both an IV and dependent variable (DV), lifetime history as IV, and health symptoms as a DV. Finally, abuse or trauma is an IV whether it is physical or non-physical.

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Variables are not clearly stated as such.

The majority of the articles cited within the literature review are recent to the article; they are within 10 years of the publication and are primary sources. However, the literature review is a bit scanty in that there are many citations, but few specifics. Moreover the researchers only review the literature for one PTSD cluster, hyper-arousal and its effect health. There must be more. The researchers are trying to investigate quite a view different of effects and we are looking at several measures and how they affect health and PTSD the review is inadequate.

The sampling plan is one of convenience, so we know that generalziability is poor. There was no evidence of coercion even though all participants were paid a nominal fee. The study design is purely correlational via the use of surveys. Therefore all one can determine is relationships, one cannot hypothesize cause. The measures all have Cronbach alphas over .7, except for the lifetime violent and nonviolent trauma scale, so most of the instruments are reliable. Acceptable validity coefficients are demonstrated for given for all of the measure except the lifetime trauma scale. There are few controls (e.g., the diagnoses of PTSD positive and negative is made via survey results and not on a clinical diagnosis). Therefore….....

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