Structure and Associations of Potentially Traumatic Events and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in Clinical Populations from Kenya and Uganda

Background

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remains underexplored in Africa, where measurement of potentially traumatic events (PTEs), PTSD symptoms, and their associations may differ from other populations. Objective & Method: We examined the factor structure of PTEs and PTSD symptoms, measured by the Life-Events Checklist-5 and PTSD Checklist-5, respectively, the item-level response patterns in relation to their corresponding factors, the structural and relational aspects of these instruments, and the factors’ associations in clinical samples from Kenya (N = 2,552, μage = 40.49, SD = 11.92) and Uganda (N = 4,497, μage = 38.73, SD = 11.66).