The Perceived Ability to Cope with Trauma Scale: A Russian-Language Adaptation.

backgroundThe "Perceived Ability to Cope with Trauma Scale" (PACT) is designed to assess individuals' perceptions of their ability to use various coping strategies when facing potentially traumatic events. These include focusing on the cognitive processing of the trauma (the "Trauma Focus" subscale) and overcoming the trauma (the "Forward Focus" subscale). The key advantages of the PACT scale include an emphasis on perceived self-competence, the absence of the "flexibility/rigidity" dichotomy, and moderate correlations with distress that confirm discriminative validity.

aimTo adapt the PACT scale for the Russian population and conduct a psychometric assessment of its Russian-language version.

methodsThe adaptation procedure included direct and reverse translations of the PACT scale and expert assessment of their quality. To validate the adapted version of the PACT questionnaire, a survey was conducted involving adults who had experienced at least one potentially traumatic event (with assessment according to the Life Events Checklist for DSM-5). The sample was made up of civilians and employees of emergency services (firemen, rescue workers, physicians, psychologists). The psychometric assessment included a check of the factor structure, assessment of sex, age, occupation, and post-traumatic status invariance, as well as assessment of internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The International Trauma Questionnaire and Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 were used to test convergent validity.

resultsA psychometric assessment of the adapted version of the PACT scale was conducted with 1,054 respondents (56% male) with a mean age of 37.2 (standard deviation 9.54) years. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the two-factor structure of the scale, complete invariance by age and partial invariance by sex, occupation, and post-traumatic status. The reliability coefficients (Cronbach's α and McDonald's ω) showed good values for the "Trauma Focus" subscale (ω=0.810, α=0.806) and the "Forward Focus" subscale (ω=0.896, α=0.893). The test-retest reliability was partially confirmed. The convergent validity of the adapted version of the PACT scale was confirmed: symptoms of distress and post-traumatic stress were negatively correlated with the score on the "Forward Focus" subscale and positively correlated with the "Trauma Focus" score.

conclusionThe Russian-language version of the PACT scale is valid, reliable, and can be used to assess the perceived ability to cope with trauma for research or counseling purposes.