Self-reports of potentially traumatic experiences in an adult community sample: gender differences and test-retest stabilities of the items in a brief betrayal-trauma survey

Abstract

A new survey of potentially traumatic events was administered to a large community sample on two occasions, three years apart. In contrast to previous surveys, this one included separate items for events that involve mistreatment by someone close, mistreatment by someone not so close, and non-interpersonal events. For both kinds of interpersonal events, separate items focused on physical, sexual, and emotional types of potential abuse. For each event, respondents indicated the extent of their exposure both prior to and after age 18. This paper reports the prevalence of each of the various kinds of events in subsamples of women (N = 397) and men (N = 292) in both childhood and adulthood, and provides four alternative indices of test-retest stability for each of the event reports. Substantial differences between men and women were found for many of the reported events on both occasions. Specifically, far more women than men reported having experienced traumatic events perpetrated by someone close to them, whereas far more men than women reported having experienced traumatic events perpetrated by someone not close. Some of the implications of these gender interaction effects are discussed.