Although information about individuals' exposure to highly stressful events such as traumatic stressors is often very useful for clinicians and researchers, available measures are too long and complex for use in many settings. The Trauma History Screen was developed to provide a very brief and easy-to-complete self-report measure of exposure to high magnitude stressor (HMS) events and of events associated with significant and persisting posttraumatic distress (PPD). The measure assesses the frequency of HMS and PPD events, and it provides detailed information about PPD events. Test-retest reliability was studied in four samples, and temporal stability was good to excellent for items and trauma types and excellent for overall HMS and PPD scores. Comprehensibility of items was supported by expert ratings of how well items appeared to be understood by participants with relatively low reading levels. In five samples, construct validity was supported by findings of strong convergent validity with a longer measure of trauma exposure and by correlations of HMS and PPD scores with PTSD symptoms. The psychometric properties Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Eve Carlson, Ph.D., National Center for PTSD (334-PTSD), 795 Willow Rd., Menlo Park, CA 94025. eve.carlson@va.gov. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/pubs/journals/pas NIH Public Access Exposure to sudden, highly stressful events is fairly common among the general population in the U.S. (Breslau, 2002) and is even more frequent among those seeking mental health treatment (Jacobson, 1989). Information about exposure to sudden, severe stressors is clinically important because such exposure has been found to be associated with increases in later psychological disorder (Brown, Fulton, Wilkeson, & Petty, 2000;Bryant et al., 2010) and decreases in physical health (Schnurr & Green, 2004), occupational functioning (Zatzick et al., 2008), and socioeconomic well-being (Zielinski, 2009). In prospective studies and meta-analyses of trauma research, psychological disorders found to increase most following highly stressful events include depression, generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), agoraphobia, phobia, and substance abuse (Brown et al., 2000;Bryant et al., 2010;Reed, Anthony, & Breslau, 2007). In addition, repeated, severe sudden stressors that occur during early childhood are thought to play a role in the development of borderline personality disorder (Herman & van der Kolk, 1987); some dissociative disorders (De...

This preliminary study investigated the role of Asian American (AA) ethnicity on Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI;Morey, 1991) scores. Nonclinical college-aged AAs and a comparison group of European American (EA) students were recruited for the present study. The authors hypothesized that AA examinees' scores on the PAI would reflect traditional Asian values, such as modesty, abasement, "saving face," keeping private matters within the family, somatization, anxiety, formal interpersonal styles, and impulse-control. The results suggest nonclinical AAs respond differently on the PAI when compared with nonclinical EAs (i.e., significantly higher on the Paranoia, Anxiety, Anxiety-Related Disorders clinical scales). They also scored significantly different from EAs on validity and interpersonal scales (i.e., higher NIM and lower WRM scales, respectively). Whereas the AA sample size was too small to examine the effects of acculturation on PAI responding, descriptives on acculturation and enculturation levels were generated. This study provided a number of interesting findings and offers various hypotheses about AA personality. Future follow-up studies using larger sample sizes are needed to elucidate these preliminary results.

Aspects of the stressor criterion for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been controversial since its inception, and the theoretical or empirical reasons for decisions about it have not been clear. To investigate whether sudden events involving severe emotional loss have the potential to precipitate PTSD, we assessed exposure to Criterion A stressors, sudden abandonment, sudden move or loss of home, and symptoms of PTSD and dissociation in a community sample of 427 adults. In regression analyses, models that included a severe emotional loss stressor accounted for a significant amount of additional variance in PTSD and dissociation symptoms beyond that accounted for by a model including only Criterion A stressors. The findings suggest that limiting Criterion A1 to events involving actual or threatened death or injury may be overly restrictive. Future research is needed to replicate these findings in a clinical sample and to prospectively examine the conditional probability of PTSD following these events.

Past studies relating personality traits and product usage patterns have utilized personality tests that may have been inappropriate inasmuch as they have been developed for specialized and sometimes diagnostic purposes. This exploratory study used scales from Jackson's (1967) Personality Research Form (PRF), which is intended for a wide variety of situations, including consumer behavior. Undergraduate college students (« = 232) completed five scales of the PRF and also indicated product usage information. Canonical analysis was used to analyze the results of this study. The findings confirm the complex relations between personality traits and product use.

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