French Validation of Two Questionnaires Measuring Posttraumatic Cognitions After Sexual Assault

ABSTRACT

People who have been sexually assaulted are at risk of developing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including negative posttraumatic cognitions such as self-blame. Although targeting maladaptive cognitions is an important part of cognitive-behavioral treatment for PTSD, no validated questionnaire targeting posttraumatic cognitions after a sexual assault is available in French. The aim of this study was to translate the Posttraumatic Maladaptive Beliefs Scale (PMBS) and the Rape Attribution Questionnaire (RAQ) in French, adapt the content of the latter to make it more inclusive of all genders and widen the representation of sexual assault contexts, and document their psychometric qualities in the general population who self-reported having experienced a sexual assault. Participants were 439 adults recruited via e-mails to the members of the Laval University community and postings on social media. They completed online sociodemographic and clinical questionnaires, including the PMBS, the RAQ and four questionnaires targeting PTSD symptom severity, posttraumatic cognitions, depression, and anxiety symptoms. The PMBS and the RAQ were completed a second time one week later. The French versions of the questionnaires showed good convergent and divergent validity, internal consistency (PMBS: α between .740 and .868; RAQ: .806 and .901) and test-retest reliability (r between .785 and .833 for the PMBS, .776 and .840 for the RAQ). The French versions of the PMBS and the RAQ are useful instruments to assess posttraumatic cognitions and can be used in clinical and research settings to improve the treatment of PTSD in people who have been sexually assaulted.

KEYWORDS:

• Posttraumatic maladaptive beliefs scale (PMBS)
• posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• psychometric validation
• rape attribution questionnaire (RAQ)
• self-blame

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the generous contribution of research participants’ time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical standards and informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (Laval University Institutional Review Board: approval number 2021–233/09-09-2021) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.