The assessment of psychopathology among traumatized refugees: measurement invariance of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 across five linguistic groups

ABSTRACTBackground: Questionnaires are widely used to assess the mental health status of refugees, whereas their construct validity largely remains unexplored.Objective: This study examined the construct validity of two widely-used instruments for the assessment of PTSD symptoms (Harvard Trauma Questionnaire [HTQ]; 16 items) and symptoms of anxiety and depression (Hopkins Symptom Check list-25 [HSCL-25]; 25 items) among Dutch and refugee patients with different linguistic backgrounds.Method: We applied exploratory factor analyses and measurement invariance analyses to test construct validity.Participants (n =1 256) were divided into five linguistic groups defined by language family, including four non-western linguistic groups (Indo-Iranian [n = 262], Niger-Congo [n = 134], Semitic [n = 288], and South Slavic languages [n = 199]) and one western linguistic group (Germanic languages; Dutch [n = 373]).Results: Exploratory factor analysis yielded a 3-factor structure of the HTQ and a 2-factor structure of th...