The War Events Questionnaire

Background: The measurement of exposure to war in large epidemiological stu dies necessitates the use of easily administered and reliable questionnaire s that cover a range of war events. The War Event Questionnaire (WEQ) was d esigned by our group to address these issues and has proved to be quite eas y to administer. The aim of this study is to establish the inter-rater reli ability of the WEQ. Method: Two trained interviewers alternated in administ ering parts I and II of the WEQ. Results: The Kappa statistics used to calc ulate the degree of agreement between the two raters ranged from 0.281 to 0 .774 for part I events and from 0.189 to 1.000 for part II events. Conclusi on: The WEQ has proved to be a useful instrument that addresses both object ive and the subjective war experiences; it is a fairly reliable instrument and has helped us avoid tautological assessment of the mental health effect s of war.