Influence of perceived trauma on the cognitive processing model of posttraumatic growth among university students

ABSTRACT

This study examined whether perceiving an event as a trauma influenced a cognitive processing model explaining posttraumatic growth (PTG). A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with 311 university students from eight universities in Japan. The participants provided information about the most stressful event they had experienced and completed the expanded version of the PTG Inventory, Core Belief Inventory, Event Related Rumination Inventory, and Cognitive and Emotional Processing from Disclosure Inventory. A multi-group structural equation modeling was conducted by dividing the participants into two groups depending on whether they identified the most stressful event as a trauma. The model with no constraint showed a good fit. The model with partial constraint showed a better fit than the models with no constraint or full constraint. The difference of the model was seen as a covariance between the Event Related Rumination Inventory and the Cognitive and Emotional Processing from Disclosure Inventory. The results demonstrated configural invariance and partial metric invariance. This indicated that PTG would be recognized irrespective of whether the event was perceived as a trauma. This study also indicated that different factors out of the model could be associated with the ruminative process and disclosure process. The importance of focusing on the process of PTG, regardless of an individual’s perception of the event, was emphasized, especially for factors related to rumination and disclosure.

KEYWORDS:

• Posttraumatic growth
• stressful events
• rumination
• self-disclosure
• multigroup structural equation modeling

Disclosure statement

The authors have declared that they have no competing or potential conflicts of interest.

Data Availability Statement

Due to the nature of this research, the participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, thus supporting data are not available.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) KAKENHI Grant Numbers 16K20786, Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B).