What is told when the story is retold? Consistency of victimization reports in psychiatric patients

Abstract

The use of retrospective self-reports is a major methodological concern when ascertaining the occurrence of victimization experiences, with additional concerns when assessing psychiatric patients. The test for consistency can overcome some of these concerns, increasing the confidence in the information reported. Our aim was twofold: (1) to know the consistency of victimization reports; and (2) to test the role of changes on emotional distress in predicting report discrepancies, in a sample of 34 adult psychiatric patients. Participants were assessed twice, with a year interval. Sexual abuse was the experience that presented the higher level of consistency for childhood victimization, while assault with a weapon had the higher consistency level for adolescent and adult victimization. We found that increases on emotional distress predicted report discrepancies, and more specifically, increases in the report of victimization. Our results displayed acceptable consistency levels, suggesting some stability in the reporting of victimization over time. Considering that inconsistencies tended either to increases and decreases in the reporting of victimization, it would be important to consider the impact of such experiences when intervening with psychiatric patients.

Risk of Subjection to Violence and Perpetration of Violence in Persons With Psychiatric Disorders in Sweden

“…This expectation is consistent with our sensitivity analysis, which observed a dose-response association between psychiatric morbidity and the severity of violence subjection events, a finding also reported in previous studies . Furthermore, it has been reported that approaches to measuring less severe violence subjection events (eg, self-reports and police reports) are associated with substantial measurement error, particularly when studying adolescents and individuals with elevated levels of psychiatric symptoms . Notably, the combination of using self-reports and sibling comparisons would further inflate the measurement error, causing an artificial bias of the estimates toward the null …”

“…15,16 Furthermore, it has been reported that approaches to measuring less severe violence subjection events (eg, selfreports and police reports) are associated with substantial measurement error, particularly when studying adolescents and individuals with elevated levels of psychiatric symptoms. 34,35 Notably, the combination of using self-reports and sibling comparisons would further inflate the measurement error, causing an artificial bias of the estimates toward the null. 36 Second, although sibling comparisons offer a powerful approach that accounts for genetic confounding, they account for approximately half of the genetic influences.…”

Comparing and Predicting Inconsistency on Positive and Negative Life Experiences Reports: Which Variables Matter?

“…Since the publication of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Holmes and Rahe 1967) in the sixties, retrospective life experience measures have been widely used to collect data for both research and clinical purposes (e.g., Kendall-Tackett and Becker-Blease 2004;Paykel 2001;Shaffer et al 2008), usually through cross-sectional designs (e.g., Chapman et al 2004;Sun et al 2017). Concurrently, many claims arose warning about the lack of consistency in those reports (e.g., Jenkins et al 1979;Klein and Rubovits 1987;Mesquita and Maia 2018;Zimmerman 1983), which is still a major challenge (Hardt and Rutter 2004). Surprisingly, little attention is given to the topic, which is far from being fully understood.…”