Psychology, Interamerican
Cross-national invariance of the Spanish version of the 8-item Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form (PTGI-SF) in people who experienced the death of loved ones from four South American countries
Creative Commons
PDF

Keywords

cross-cultural
invariance
south american
posttraumatic growth
psychometric

How to Cite

Caycho-Rodríguez, T., Vilca, L., Carbajal-León, C. ., Valencia, P., Baños-Chaparro, J. ., Yupanqui-Lorenzo, D., Reyes-Bossio, M. ., Delgado-Campusano, M. ., Moreta-Herrera, R. ., Puerta-Cortés, D. X. ., Camargo, A. ., Torales, J. ., Ferrufino-Borja, D. ., Muñoz-del-Carpio-Toia, A., Noe-Grijalva, M. ., Schulmeyer, M., & Hualparuca-Olivera, L. . (2025). Cross-national invariance of the Spanish version of the 8-item Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form (PTGI-SF) in people who experienced the death of loved ones from four South American countries. Revista Interamericana De Psicología/Interamerican Journal of Psychology, 59(1), e2103. https://doi.org/10.30849/ripijp.v59(2025).e2103

Abstract

Post-pandemic, there is concern about the increase in mental health problems associated with grief due to COVID-19. Recent studies have identified positive outcomes that may have emerged in the face of adversity, which can lead to positive psychological changes, such as posttraumatic growth. The aim of the study was to evaluate the transnational measurement invariance of the 8-item Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form (PTGI-SF) in individuals who experienced the death of loved ones during the post-COVID-19 period. A total of 1,820 individuals were recruited from four South American countries (Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia) using non-probabilistic snowball sampling. The highest average age of participants was observed in Colombia (M = 35.8; SD = 12.5 years), while the lowest was recorded in Bolivia (M = 28.4; SD = 10.5 years). Similarly, a higher proportion of women (>57%) was found across all countries. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) methods were used. The results indicated that a model for measuring posttraumatic growth across the five countries was supported, encompassing four factors: relating to others, appreciation of life and opportunities, personal strength, and spiritual change. Furthermore, the four-factor structure showed sufficient strict invariance across the five countries. Similarly, the PTGI-SF-8 items demonstrated adequate discrimination and difficulty parameters. The findings provide initial evidence to consider the PTGI-SF-8 as a psychometric instrument for assessing posttraumatic growth.

https://doi.org/10.30849/ripijp.v59(2025).e2103
PDF

References

Ahmed, N., Barnett, P., Greenburgh, A., Pemovska, T., Stefanidou, T., Lyons, N., ... & Johnson, S. (2023). Mental health in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review. The Lancet Psychiatry, 10(7), 537-556. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(23)00113-X

Amiri, H., Rezapour, M., Nekoei-Moghadam, M., & Nakhaee, N. (2020). Translation and adaptation of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form into Persian. The Open Psychology Journal, 13(1), 326-332. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874350102013010326

Baker, F. (1985). The basics of item response theory. RIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

Blendermann, M., Ebalu, T. I., Obisie-Orlu, I. C., Fried, E. I., & Hallion, L. S. (2024). A narrative systematic review of changes in mental health symptoms from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological Medicine, 54(1), 43-66. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291723002295

Bollen, K. A. (1989). Structural equations with latent variables. Wiley.

Byrne, B. M., & Watkins, D. (2003). The issue of measurement invariance revisited. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(2), 155-175. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022102250225

Calhoun, L. G., Cann, A., & Tedeschi, R. G. (2010). The posttraumatic growth model: Sociocultural considerations. In T. Weiss & R. Berger (Eds.), Posttraumatic growth and culturally competent practice: Lessons learned from around the globe (pp. 1-14). John Wiley & Sons.

Cann, A., Calhoun, L. G., Tedeschi, R. G., Taku, K., Vishnevsky, T., Triplett, K. N., & Danhauer, S. C. (2010). A short form of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 23(2), 127-137. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615800903094273

Castro, M. C., Delgado, J. B., Alvarado, E. R., & Rovira, D. P. (2015). Spanish adaptation and validation of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form. Violence and Victims, 30(5), 756-769. https://doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.VV-D-13-00165

Caycho-Rodríguez, T., Valencia, P. D., Vilca, L. W., Lee, S. A., Carbajal-León, C., Vivanco-Vidal, A., ... & Gallegos, W. L. A. (2021). COVID-19 bereavement in ten Latin American countries: Measurement invariance of the Pandemic Grief Scale and its relation to suicidal ideation. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 00302228211048566. https://doi.org/10.1177/00302228211048566

Chalmers, R. P. (2012). Mirt: A multidimensional item response theory package for the R environment. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(6). https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i06

Chen, C., & Tang, S. (2021). Profiles of grief, post-traumatic stress, and post-traumatic growth among people bereaved due to COVID-19. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 12(1), 1947563. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2021.1947563

Chen, W. H., & Thissen, D. (1997). Local dependence indexes for item pairs using item response theory. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 22(3), 265-289. https://doi.org/10.2307/1165285

Clemente-Suárez, V. J., Navarro-Jiménez, E., Jimenez, M., Hormeño-Holgado, A., Martinez-Gonzalez, M. B., Benitez-Agudelo, J. C., ... & Tornero-Aguilera, J. F. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on public mental health: An extensive narrative review. Sustainability, 13(6), 3221. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063221

Dimitrov, D. M. (2010). Testing for factorial invariance in the context of construct validation. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 43(2), 121-149. https://doi.org/10.1177/0748175610373459

Embretson, S. E., & Reise, S. P. (2000). Item response theory for psychologists. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Feingold, J. H., Hurtado, A., Feder, A., Peccoralo, L., Southwick, S. M., Ripp, J., & Pietrzak, R. H. (2022). Posttraumatic growth among health care workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Affective Disorders, 296, 35-40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.09.032

Fekih-Romdhane, F., Fawaz, M., Hallit, R., Sawma, T., Obeid, S., & Hallit, S. (2024). Psychometric properties of an Arabic translation of the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10), the 8- and 10-item Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form (PTGI-SF) scales. PLOS ONE, 19(1), e0293079. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293079

Finney, S. J., & DiStefano, C. (2013). Nonnormal and categorical data in structural equation modeling. In G. R. Hancock & R. O. Mueller (Eds.), Structural equation modeling: A second course (pp. 439-492). IAP Information Age Publishing.

García, F. E., & Wlodarczyk, A. (2016). Psychometric properties of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form among Chilean adults. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 21(4), 303-314. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325024.2015.1108788

Garrido-Hernansaiz, H., Rodríguez-Rey, R., Collazo-Castiñeira, P., & Collado, S. (2023). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form (PTGI-SF): A psychometric study of the Spanish population during the COVID-19 pandemic. Current Psychology, 42, 17513-17522. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02645-z

Gilmoor, A. R., Adithy, A., & Regeer, B. (2019). The cross-cultural validity of post-traumatic stress disorder and post-traumatic stress symptoms in the Indian context: A systematic search and review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 10, 439. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00439

Gómez-Acosta, A., Ramos-Vera, C., & Sierra Barón, W. (2022). Validation of an ultra-short version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory in Colombian adults exposed to COVID-19. Death Studies, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2022.2098415

Gonda, X., & Tarazi, F. I. (2022). Well-being, resilience and post-traumatic growth in the era of COVID-19 pandemic. European Neuropsychopharmacology, 54, 65-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2021.08.266

Hambleton, R. K., van der Linden, W. J., & Wells, C. S. (2010). IRT models for the analysis of polytomously scored data: Brief and selected history of model building advances. In M. L. Nering & R. Ostini (Eds.), Handbook of polytomous item response theory models (pp. 21-42). Routledge.

Hays, R. D., Morales, L. S., & Reise, S. P. (2000). Item response theory and health outcomes measurement in the 21st century. Medical Care, 38(9 Suppl), II28-II42. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005650-200009002-00007

He, J., & van de Vijver, F. (2012). Bias and equivalence in cross-cultural research. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1111

Herbert, J. D., & Forman, E. M. (2010). Cross-cultural perspectives on posttraumatic stress. In G. M. Rosen & B. C. Frueh (Eds.), Clinician's guide to posttraumatic stress disorder (pp. 235-261). Wiley.

Hernández, R. M., Saavedra-López, M., Calle-Ramirez, X., Cjuno, J., & Escobedo, F. (2021). Latin American scientific production on mental health in times of COVID-19. Malaysian Journal of Public Health Medicine, 21(2), 103-111. https://doi.org/10.37268/mjphm/vol.21/no.2/art.795

Hyun, S., Wong, G. T. F., Levy-Carrick, N. C., Charmaraman, L., Cozier, Y., Yip, T., & Liu, C. H. (2021). Psychosocial correlates of posttraumatic growth among U.S. young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychiatry Research, 302, 114035. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114035

Jones, E. A., Mitra, A. K., & Bhuiyan, A. R. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 on mental health in adolescents: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(5), 2470. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052470

Jorgensen, T. D., Pornprasertmanit, S., Schoemann, A. M., & Rosseel, Y. (2018). semTools: Useful tools for structural equation modeling. R package version 0.5-1. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=semTools

Kalaitzaki, A., Tamiolaki, A., & Tsouvelas, G. (2022). From secondary traumatic stress to vicarious posttraumatic growth amid COVID-19 lockdown in Greece: The role of health care workers’ coping strategies. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 14(2), 273-280. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001078

Kaler, M. E., Erbes, C. R., Tedeschi, R. G., Arbisi, P. A., & Polusny, M. A. (2011). Factor structure and concurrent validity of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form among veterans from the Iraq War. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 24(2), 200-207. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.20623

Kashyap, S., & Hussain, D. (2018). Cross-cultural challenges to the construct “posttraumatic growth.” Journal of Loss and Trauma, 23(1), 51-69. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325024.2017.1422234

Kenny, D. A., Kaniskan, B., & McCoach, D. B. (2015). The performance of RMSEA in models with small degrees of freedom. Sociological Methods & Research, 44(3), 486-507. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124114543236

Kline, R. B. (2015). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (4th ed.). Guilford Press.

Lamela, D., Figueiredo, B., Bastos, A., & Martins, H. (2014). Psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory Short Form among divorced adults. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 30(1), 3-14. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000161

Li, L., Mao, M., Wang, S., Yin, R., Yan, H. O., Jin, Y., & Cheng, Y. (2022). Posttraumatic growth in Chinese nurses and general public during the COVID-19 outbreak. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 27(2), 301-311. https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2021.1897148

Lin, C. Y., & Pakpour, A. H. (2017). Using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) on patients with epilepsy: Confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch models. Seizure, 45, 42-46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seizure.2016.11.019

Matos, M., McEwan, K., Kanovský, M., Halamová, J., Steindl, S. R., Ferreira, N., ... & Gilbert, P. (2021). Fears of compassion magnify the harmful effects of threat of COVID-19 on mental health and social safeness across 21 countries. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 28(6), 1317-1333. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.2601

McDonald, R. P. (1999). Test theory: A unified treatment. Taylor & Francis.

Milfont, T. L., & Fischer, R. (2010). Testing measurement invariance across groups: Applications in cross-cultural research. International Journal of Psychological Research, 3(1), 111-130. https://doi.org/10.21500/20112084.857

Millsap, R. E., & Olivera-Aguilar, M. (2012). Investigating measurement invariance using confirmatory factor analysis. In R. Hoyle (Ed.), Handbook of structural equation modeling (pp. 380-416). Guilford Press.

Moreta-Herrera, R., Caycho-Rodríguez, T., Salinas, A., Jiménez-Borja, M., Gavilanes-Gómez, D., & Jiménez-Mosquera, C. J. (2022). Factorial validity, reliability, measurement invariance and the graded response model for the COVID-19 Anxiety Scale in a sample of Ecuadorians. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 00302228221116515. https://doi.org/10.1177/00302228221116515

Penninx, B. W., Benros, M. E., Klein, R. S., & Vinkers, C. H. (2022). How COVID-19 shaped mental health: From infection to pandemic effects. Nature Medicine, 28(10), 2027-2037. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-02028-2

Pietrzak, R. H., Tsai, J., & Southwick, S. M. (2021). Association of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder with posttraumatic psychological growth among U.S. veterans during the COVID-19 pandemic. JAMA Network Open, 4(4), e214972. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4972

Prati, G., & Pietrantoni, L. (2014). Italian adaptation and confirmatory factor analysis of the full and the short form of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 19(1), 12-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325024.2012.734203

Prieto-Ursúa, M., & Jódar, R. (2020). Finding meaning in hell. The role of meaning, religiosity and spirituality in posttraumatic growth during the coronavirus crisis in Spain. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 567836. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567836

Prowse, R., Sherratt, F., Abizaid, A., Gabrys, R. L., Hellemans, K. G., Patterson, Z. R., & McQuaid, R. J. (2021). Coping with the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining gender differences in stress and mental health among university students. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 650759. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.650759

Qian, W., Tang, R., Jiao, K., Xu, X., Zou, X., & Wang, J. (2022). Growing in suffering: The curvilinear relationship between prolonged grief and post-traumatic growth of recently bereaved individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 00302228221141937. https://doi.org/10.1177/00302228221141937

R Core Team. (2019). A language and environment for statistical computing (R version 3.6.1). R Foundation for Statistical Computing. http://www.r-project.org/

Ramos-Vera, C., Ramírez, Y. B., Rojas, E. R., Serpa-Barrientos, A., & García, F. E. (2021). Evidencias psicométricas mediante SEM y análisis de red del "Inventario de Crecimiento Postraumático" en adolescentes peruanos. Psicología Conductual, 29(2), 417-436.

Rhemtulla, M., Brosseau-Liard, P. E., & Savalei, V. (2012). When can categorical variables be treated as continuous? A comparison of robust continuous and categorical SEM estimation methods under suboptimal conditions. Psychological Methods, 17(3), 354-373. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029315

Rosseel, Y. (2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1-36. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02

RStudio Team. (2018). RStudio: Integrated development environment for R. RStudio, Inc. http://www.rstudio.com/

Samejima, F. (1997). Graded response model. In W. J. Van der Linden & R. K. Hambleton (Eds.), Handbook of modern item response theory (pp. 85-100). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2691-6_5

Saragih, I. D., Tonapa, S. I., Saragih, I. S., Advani, S., Batubara, S. O., Suarilah, I., & Lin, C. J. (2021). Global prevalence of mental health problems among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 121, 104002. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2021.104002

Schumacker, R. E., & Lomax, R. G. (2015). A beginner’s guide to structural equation modeling (4th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315749105

Solomou, I., & Constantinidou, F. (2020). Prevalence and predictors of anxiety and depression symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic and compliance with precautionary measures: Age and sex matter. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(14), 4924. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17144924

Sousa, G. M. D., Tavares, V. D. D. O., de Meiroz Grilo, M. L. P., Coelho, M. L. G., Lima-Araújo, G. L. D., Schuch, F. B., & Galvão-Coelho, N. L. (2021). Mental health in COVID-19 pandemic: A meta-review of prevalence meta-analyses. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 703838. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.703838

Splevins, K., Cohen, K., Bowley, J., & Joseph, S. (2010). Theories of posttraumatic growth: Cross-cultural perspectives. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 15(3), 259-277. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325020903382111

Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (2021). Bereavement in times of COVID-19: A review and theoretical framework. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 82(3), 500-522. https://doi.org/10.1177/0030222820966928

Taasoobshirazi, G., & Wang, S. (2016). The performance of the SRMR, RMSEA, CFI, and TLI: An examination of sample size, path size, and degrees of freedom. Journal of Applied Quantitative Methods, 11(3), 31-39. http://jaqm.ro/issues/volume-11,issue-3/pdfs/2_GI_SH_.pdf

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9(3), 455-471. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02103658

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01

Thomson, G., Cook, J., Nowland, R., Donnellan, W. J., Topalidou, A., Jackson, L., & Fallon, V. (2022). Resilience and post‐traumatic growth in the transition to motherhood during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A qualitative exploratory study. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 36(4), 1143-1155. https://doi.org/10.1111/scs.13087

Tsai, J., El-Gabalawy, R., Sledge, W. H., Southwick, S. M., & Pietrzak, R. H. (2015). Post-traumatic growth among veterans in the USA: Results from the National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study. Psychological Medicine, 45(1), 165-179. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291714001202

Veenhoven, R. (1996). Developments in satisfaction-research. Social Indicators Research, 37(1), 1-46. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00300268

Viladrich, C., Angulo-Brunet, A., & Doval, E. (2017). A journey around alpha and omega to estimate internal consistency reliability. Anales de Psicología, 33(3), 755-782. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesps.33.3.268401

Zickar, M. J., & Broadfoot, A. A. (2009). The partial revival of a dead horse? Comparing classical test theory and item response theory. In C. E. Lance & R. J. Vandenberg (Eds.), Statistical and methodological myths and urban legends (pp. 37-61). Routledge.

Zickar, M. J., Russel, S. S., Smith, C. S., Bohle, P., & Tilley, A. J. (2002). Evaluating two morningness scales with item response theory. Personality and Individual Differences, 33(1), 11-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(01)00131-3

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Copyright (c) 2025 Tomás Caycho-Rodríguez, Lindsey Vilca, Daniela Ferrufino-Borja, Carlos Carbajal-León, Pablo Valencia, Jonatan Baños-Chaparro, Daniel Yupanqui-Lorenzo, Mario Reyes-Bossio, Mariel Delgado-Campusano, Rodrigo Moreta-Herrera, Diana Ximena Puerta-Cortés, Andrés Camargo, Julio Torales, Agueda Muñoz-del-Carpio-Toia, Martin Noe-Grijalva, Marion Schulmeyer, Luis Hualparuca-Olivera