Sexual Assault Survivors' Post-Traumatic Growth: Individual and Community-Level Differences

Past research has focused on individual differences in post-traumatic growth (PTG) among survivors, but no studies to date have examined differences at the neighborhood level. This exploratory study uses data from a 3-year longitudinal study of women sexual assault survivors (N = 1,863) living in a segregated city. We tested random intercept models of individuals nested within neighborhoods. Disrupted core beliefs, greater perceived control over recovery, less post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), religious coping, and positive social coping predicted more PTG. White survivors had lower PTG scores than the women of color in this study. Neighborhood-level differences in PTG scores persisted even though violent crime rate and neighborhood poverty did not emerge as significant in our model.