The Danieli Inventory of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, Part I: Survivors' posttrauma adaptational styles in their children's eyes

A comprehensive valid behavioral measure for assessing multidimensional multigenerational impacts of massive trauma has been missing thus far. We describe the development of the Posttrauma Adaptational Styles questionnaire (Part I of the three-part Danieli Inventory of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma), a self-report questionnaire of Holocaust survivors' children's perceptions of each parent and their own upbringing (60 items per parent). The items were based on literature and cognitive interviewing of 18 survivors' offspring. A web-based convenience sample survey was designed in English and Hebrew and completed by 482 adult children (M age=59; 67% women) of Holocaust survivors. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted by using maximum likelihood extraction with Geomin rotation to examine the factor structure of the original 70 items for each parent. Conducted hierarchically, the analysis yielded three higher-order factors reflecting intensities of victim, numb, and fighter styles. The 30-item Victim Style Scale (α=.92-.93) and 18-item Numb Style Scale (α=.89) had excellent internal consistency; the consistency of the 12-item Fighter Style Scale (α=.69-.70) was more modest. English-Hebrew analyses suggested good-to-excellent congruence in factor structure (ϕ=.87-.99). Further research is needed to evaluate the validity of the measure in other samples and populations.