Psychometric validation of the centrality of events scale in a Nigerian clinical sample

Abstract

We sought to validate the Centrality of Event Scale (CES) in a Nigerian clinical sample of people living with HIV/ ADS. Our sample consisted of 869 people living with HIV/AIDS. They completed the CES, the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Checklist for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual version 5 (DSM-5), and the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-short form for concurrent validation. Following exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), results confirmed a three-factor structure for the CES, including: reference point, personal identity, and turning point. Positive event centralisation was positively associated with posttraumatic growth (PTG), while negative event centralisation was positively associated with PTSD symptoms. This suggests that in a clinical sample, survivors of traumatic events who positively centralise their traumatic experiences may experience post-traumatic growth while those who negatively centralise their traumatic experiences may experience PTSD symptoms.