Development and validation of a self-report for the assessment of adjustment disorders

Abstract

Based on a recent diagnostic proposal for adjustment disorders a self-report assessment was developed. The current study reports validation results. Psychometric properties were examined using two different samples of 687 patients with cardiac arrhythmias and 86 patients from a psychosomatic outpatient clinic. Besides evaluating the internal structure and re-test reliability, associations with quality of life, general anxiety and depression, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and coping strategies were analyzed. The factor analysis confirmed the three postulated factors: intrusion, avoidance and failure to adapt. The internal consistencies for these three scales were between α = 0.74 and 0.91. The re-rest reliability of the scales for a six-week period lay between r(tt) = 0.61 and 0.84. Medium-sized correlations were found between the scales with general anxiety and depression as well as posttraumatic stress disorder. Furthermore, the scales correlated with emotion-oriented and somewhat with proactive coping, but not with task-oriented or avoidance-oriented coping strategies. It is concluded that the self-report on adjustment disorders enables new possibilities to investigate further previously under-researched adjustment disorders.

A socio-interpersonal approach to adjustment disorder: the example of involuntary job loss

“…We used the eight items that measure preoccupation, failure to adapt, and functional impairment to build a total sum score (ADNM-8). The ADNM-20 showed satisfactory properties regarding factor structure, internal consistency, retest-reliability, and construct validity (Bley, Einsle, Maercker, Weidner, & Joraschky, 2008; Einsle et al, 2010; Glaesmer et al, 2015) in previous studies. The use of the ADNM-8 found initial support in two previous studies (Kazlauskas, Gegieckaite, Maercker, Eimontas, & Zelviene, 2018; Zelviene et al, 2017).…”

“…AjD Symptom Severity was assessed using the Adjustment Disorder – New Module 20 (ADNM-20; Einsle, Köllner, Dannemann, & Maercker, 2010). The ADNM-20 is a self-report questionnaire that evaluates previous life events and AjD symptoms in response to the most severe life event (Einsle et al, 2010).…”

“…The ADNM-20 is a self-report questionnaire that evaluates previous life events and AjD symptoms in response to the most severe life event (Einsle et al, 2010). In the present study, we used a contextualized version of the ADNM-20 symptom list and all the items referred to the job loss.…”

A scoping review of ICD-11 adjustment disorder research

“…This AjD measure was proposed prior to the ICD-11 proposals with an introduction of the ADNM in 2007 (Einsle, Köllner, Dannemann, & Maercker, 2010; Maercker, Einsle, & Köllner, 2007). The ADNM has two parts.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, the only ICD-11 based measure currently available is the Adjustment Disorder New Module (ADNM) (Einsle et al, 2010) which was used in all 10 reviewed studies. The validity of the ADNM has been tested in two studies (Bachem et al, 2016; Lorenz et al, 2016).…”