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Family Matters: Broadening the Perspective of Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG)

PTG, the positive psychological change triggered by traumatic events, is an exciting and relatively new field of research. What research there is has mostly utilised qualitative methods, providing an in-depth account of the experience of PTG that quantitative methods would struggle to replicate, but lacking validity when findings are applied to different populations and situations (Zoellner et al, 2011). A series of smaller PTG studies would provide insight into how the traumatic event itself affects PTG and demonstrate the potential effectiveness of consistent inter-study quantitative measures of PTG. Research into the effect of family support on PTG, and the experience of the family itself, is limited (Moore et al, 2011). Lovell and Mason (2012) considered the experience of mothers caring for a child with a learning disability, identifying multiple themes, two of which, The Dawning of Disability and Making it Work, share principles with the trauma and growth aspects of PTG research. Investigating the family unit allows us to explore trauma in a broader context, considering both primary and secondary caregivers. PTG has typically been studied in health-care settings (Hefferon, Grealy and Mutire, 2009). Increasingly, evidence suggests that the type of trauma, as well as the pre-trauma personality traits of the individual (Dekel, Mandl & Solomon, 2011), can determine the degree of PTG experienced. Using PTG as an outcome variable, this study will expand on previous research by comparing the type of person and trauma. In addition to the established study of long-term illnesses including terminal, mental and sexual illnesses, there shall be a fourth, original field of research addressing the family experience of young offenders going through the Criminal Justice System (CJS). Initially, trauma severity shall be tested using the Revised Impact of Event Scale (IES-R) and the PostTraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale (PDS). Personality traits of the family shall be measured

using the Mini International Personality Item Pool (Mini-IPIP), and their actual and perceived relationships using the Family Relations Test (FRT). These can then be examined alongside the Post-Traumatic Growth Index (PTGI). Follow-up tests shall be carried out six months later. For each study, the independent variables are the personality traits of family members, the type/strength of their relationships, trauma impact, and the two testing stages. The dependent outcome is the level of PTG. I expect that family units with secure relationships between members will demonstrate higher PTG initially and greater improvement during follow-up testing. As a thesis, results of the family experience of trauma and PTG should differ across trauma type, with personality and the security of relationships within the family accounting for variance. This project will enhance the limited pool of quantitative data relating to the study of PTG, breaking new ground in exploring the family experience of trauma. Eventually, the same method could be used on an international scale, to determine cultural variations in trauma response. In broadening the study of PTG beyond the traumatised individual we can show that, in a crisis, family matters.

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