Table 6.
Correlations between Observed PTSD Scales and Scales Measuring Depression, Anxiety, and General Distress
| Sample and Assessment | External Criteria | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Depression | Anxiety | GD | |
| Community Violence (3-Month) | |||
| Reexperiencing | .63 | .71 | .69 |
| Avoidance | .46 | .53 | .52 |
| Dysphoria | .77 | .74 | .81 |
| Hyperarousal | .54 | .64 | .63 |
| Non-Dysphoriaa | .66 | .75 | .73 |
| Community Violence (12-Month) | |||
| Reexperiencing | .63 | .77 | .66 |
| Avoidance | .48 | .54 | .51 |
| Dysphoria | .82 | .79 | .74 |
| Hyperarousal | .52 | .66 | .57 |
| Non-Dysphoriaa | .66 | .80 | .70 |
| Fire (3-Month) | |||
| Reexperiencing | .72 | -- | .70 |
| Avoidance | .71 | -- | .70 |
| Dysphoria | .86 | -- | .85 |
| Hyperarousal | .77 | -- | .73 |
| Non-Dysphoriaa | .80 | -- | .77 |
| Fire (15-Month) | |||
| Reexperiencing | .63 | -- | .63 |
| Avoidance | .61 | -- | .60 |
| Dysphoria | .84 | -- | .83 |
| Hyperarousal | .72 | -- | .71 |
| Non-Dysphoriaa | .70 | -- | .69 |
Note. PTSD = Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. GD = General Distress. The GD scale is composed of symptoms that emerged as relatively pure markers of general distress. Depression and anxiety scales are proxy measures of general distress that contain symptoms that measure, to varying degrees, both general and domain-specific distress. For each measure of general distress and within each assessment, the largest correlation with the four PTSD-Dysphoria scales is shown in boldface. Dashed lines indicate that a scale measuring this construct was not administered.
This scale is composed of the sum of the nine PTSD symptoms that were not included in the Simms et al. (2002) PTSD-Dysphoria factor. Thus, it combines items across three symptom clusters (i.e., reexperiencing, avoidance, hyperarousal). With respect to scale length alone, this 9-item scale is more directly comparable to the 8-item Dysphoria scale.