Dimensionality of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in children exposed to disaster: Results from confirmatory factor analyses

Factor analytic studies of trauma victims' posttraumatic stress disorder(PT SD) have offered conflicting hypotheses about how to conceptualize PTSD int o symptom categories. The present study used confirmatory factor analyses o f self-reported PTSD symptomatology from 5,664 child and adolescent victims of Hurricane Hugo to compare 10 models of PTSD dimensionality. PTSD was be st represented by a 2nd-order PTSD factor that manifests in 3 symptom clust ers (Intrusion/Active Avoidance, Numbing/Passive Avoidance, and Arousal). T his model was cross-validated on 3 age groups (late childhood, early adoles cence, and late adolescence), and results indicated factorial invariance ac ross groups. PTSD symptoms varied in relative centrality to the underlying dimensions of PTSD, which differed in their relations with anxiety and degr ee of traumatic exposure. Implications for classification criteria and an e mpirically supported theory of PTSD are discussed.