Investigation of Psychometric Properties of the Georgian Version of Posttraumatic Growth Inventory

ABSTRACT

This paper reports the analysis of psychometric properties of the Georgian version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI-Geo). In particular, factor structure, internal consistency of the subscales, gender differences, and relation between traumatic event category and posttraumatic growth (PTG) are examined. The study had 641 participants in two studies (study 1, n = 300; study 2, n = 341 participants). The study revealed that PTGI-Geo consists of four factors, instead of the original five factors; namely, the first three factors (New Possibilities, Relation to Others, and Personal Strength) remained unchanged, while the fourth (Spiritual Change) and the fifth (Appreciation of Life) factors merged and formed a new fourth factor. All four new factors have similar internal consistency as the original inventory. There were also some between-person differences for gender consistent with other research.

KEYWORDS:

• Posttraumatic growth
• factor structure
• differences

Acknowledgments

I want to express my sincere gratitude to my colleague Anna Shavgulidze, BA, who did almost all fieldwork, cleaned the data, and created a perfect database file. Also, I want to say thank you to my former student Megi Mamukashvili, BA, whose priceless help resulted in the optimal amount of data for study 2. And my huge thank you to my colleague Dr. Kate McLean for her comments and feedback on an early draft of the paper.

Notes on contributors

Lili Khechuashvili earned her PhD in Psychology in 2009 and is faculty member at Tbilisi State University from 2005, and leads courses in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate levels of study in personality psychology, narrative research, and statistics. Her current professional and research interests consist of narrative identity, posttraumatic growth and psychological well-being issues. She currently runs two research projects: “Posttraumatic growth and psychological well-being indicators in life stories of IDP and non-IPD citizens of Georgia” and “Master narrative of modern Georgians: comparative study of Georgian immigrants and those living in the country.”

Notes

¹Kate C. McLean, associate professor of psychology at Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA.