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Impact of Event Scale: psychometric properties
Eva C Sundin1, Mardi J Horowitz
1Department of Psychology, Umea University, Umea, Sweden.
Background:
For more than 20 years, the Impact of Event Scale (IES) has been widely used as a measure of stress reactions after traumatic events.
Aims:
To review studies that evaluated the IES's psychometric properties.
Method:
Literature review.
Results:
The results indicated that the IES's two-factor structure is stable over different types of events, that it can discriminate between stress reactions at different times after the event, and that it has convergent validity with observer-diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. The use of IES in many psychopharmacological trials and outcome studies is supportive of the measure's clinical relevance.
Conclusions:
The IES is a useful measure of stress reactions after a range of traumatic events, and it is valuable for detecting individuals who require treatment.