Improving Psychosocial Functioning in Older Veterans With PTSD

Primary outcomes

1. Inventory of Psychosocial Functioning (IPF) - Romantic, Family, Friends/Socializing Subscales

   Time frame: Reporting on baseline and post-group assessment (assessed at the final group session, approximately 2.5 - 3 months after baseline)

   The IPF is an 80-item self-report measure designed to assess functional impairment experienced by Veterans. Respondents rate how often they have acted a certain way over the past 30 days. Items are rated on a 7-point scale ranging from 0 ("never") to 6 ("always"). The IPF yields a total score (0-66) and scores for seven subscales: romantic relationships, family, work, friendships and socializing, parenting, education, and self-care functioning (lower indicates better functioning/less impairment). Respondents have the option to skip sections that do not apply to them. The IPF has excellent internal consistency reliability (overall alpha = .93) and the scale correlates with other self-report measures of quality of life and functional impairment, such as the QOLI (r = .59). Reporting on romantic relationships (range = 0-66), family (range = 0-42), and friends/socializing (range = 0-48) functioning subscales here. Higher scores indicate more impairment.

2. Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI)

   Time frame: Reporting on baseline and post-group scores (assessed at the final group session, approximately 2.5 - 3 months after baseline)

   The QOLI is a 32 item self-report measure that assesses life satisfaction across 16 life domains (e.g., health, work, recreation). For each domain, the respondent rates how important the domain is on a 0-2 scale and how satisfied he or she is in this area of life on a 7-point scale. Satisfaction scores on the measure are weighted based on the respondent's rating of the importance of the life domain in order to achieve a total score with higher scores indicating higher quality of life. The measure was validated across a number of samples, including psychiatric inpatient and outpatient VA samples. Test-retest reliability was excellent over a one-month interval (r = .91) as was the internal consistency of the measure (alphas ranged from .86-.89). The measure also demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity with other measures of life satisfaction. T scores were used with range 0 - 100, Mean (of reference population) =50, Standard deviation = 10

3. Veterans Rand 12-item (VR-12) Health Survey

   Time frame: Reporting on baseline and post-group scores (assessed at the final group session, approximately 2.5 - 3 months after baseline)

   The VR-12 is a 12-item scale that assesses the effects of physical and mental health on well-being, and is often used to assess quality of life. Item scores are used to compute two broad component scores: the physical component score (PCS) and the mental component score (MCS). The component scores are standardized T-Scores and the population standard for this measure was recently updated. Higher scores indicate better functioning. T scores were used with range 0 - 100, Mean (of reference population) = 50, Standard deviation = 10