Reliability and Validity of a French Version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory

In the context of traumatic stress, the dominant discourse has mainly focused on distress, thus undermining the role that eustress has in traumatic experiences. One of the few exceptions to this has been the research on posttraumatic growth, which has generated much interest since its beginning. There is an increasing interest in posttraumatic growth in various cultures and hence an expansion of the measure, the Post Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), into various languages. This article is the first to perform a rigorous investigation of the psychometric properties of the PTGI, including the scale and subscale reliability, inter-item and subscale correlations, and using a CFA approach. The properties are established with a French translation using two populations of caregivers: those bereaved by HIV/AIDS and parents who are caring for a child with a life-limiting illness. These properties were determined for both the original 21 item scale as well as the shortened version.