Self-reports of trauma and dissociation: An examination of context effects

To examine context effects in moderating the link between self-reported trauma and dissociation in undergraduate samples, we administered these measures either in the same or different experimental contexts. Trauma History Screen/THS (Carlson et al., 2011)-Dissociative Experiences Scale/DES-II (Bernstein & Putnam, 1986) correlations revealed a context effect (greater correlations in same test context), although multiple regression analyses did not confirm this finding. A context effect was supported in DES-Taxon scores using multiple regression for the THS but not the Modified Posttraumatic Stress Scale (MPSS-SR; Falsetti, Resnick, Resick, & Kilpatrick, 1993), an effect confirmed with correlation comparisons. Ethnicity influenced the association between measures of trauma and dissociation. Overall, the relation between measures of trauma and dissociation was small to medium, although high correlations were observed between the DES depersonalization/derealization subscale and the Multiscale Dissociation Inventory (Briere, Weathers, & Runtz, 2005) depersonalization and derealization subscales, supporting the construct validity of these measures.