Assessing meaning violations in Syrian refugees: A mixed ‐methods cross‐cultural adaptation of the Global Meaning Violations Scale–ArabV

AbstractRefugees are disproportionately affected by extreme traumatic events that can violate core beliefs and life goals (i.e., global meaning) and cause significant distress. This mixed-methods study used an exploratory sequential design to assess meaning violations in a sample of Syrian refugees living in Portugal. For this purpose, we cross-culturally adapted the Global Meaning Violations Scale (GMVS) for use with Arabic-speaking refugees. In total, 43 war-affected Syrian adults participated in the two-phase study. Participants completed measures of trauma and narrated violations as they filled out the newly adapted GMVS-ArabV. GMVS-ArabV validity evidence based on response processes was investigated through Phase 1 focus groups (FGs;n  =  2), whereas data from Phase 2 cognitive interviews (n  =  38) were used to preliminarily explore the measure's internal structure through descriptive statistics as well as culture- and trauma-informed content evidence through thematic analysis. The results suggested highest goal (M  =  3.51,SD = 1.46) and lowest belief (M  =  2.38,SD = 1.59) violations of educational goals and religious beliefs, respectively. Themes related to stressors, item formulation, response scale, and the global meaning construct suggested that (a) beliefs and goals can be differentially violated by different stressors; (b) much like war trauma, includ ing torture, daily stressors can additionally shatter pretrauma global meaning; and (c) refugees rea...
Source: Journal of Traumatic Stress - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research