Use of the Post-traumatic Growth Inventory for individuals in recovery from addiction: Public registration

Description
The posttraumatic growth Inventory (PTGI) (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996) is the most widely used measure of psychological growth following trauma and adversity (Frazier et al., 2009). Originally developed to account for growth across three dimensions (self, interpersonal relationships, and philosophy of life), a principal component analysis (PCA) subsequently revealed five interrelated factors: relating to others, new possibilities, personal strength, spiritual change, and appreciation of life (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996). Although specifically designed to assess growth following trauma, its developers suggested it might be a suitable measure of growth resulting from a wide range of experiences, including non-traumatic events (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). Supporting this, the PTGI has now been validated for use with a variety of populations including parents of critically ill children (Rodríguez-Rey, Alonso-Tapia, Kassam-Adams, & Garrido-Hernansaiz, 2016), students attending university (Anderson & Lopez-Baez, 2008), survivors of breast cancer (Brunet, McDonough, Hadd, Crocker, & Sabiston, 2010) and childhood sexual abuse (Saltzman, Easton, & Salas-Wright, 2015), and individuals living with chronic diseases (Purc-Stephenson, 2014). However, there is yet to be any work examining the PTGI for use with substance use populations. The study seeks to answer whether the measure is valid and reliable for use with individuals in recovery from addiction.