Psychometric Properties of the Turkish Version of the Stressful Life Events Scale and Its Relative Importance in Predicting Trauma Symptoms

The present study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of a measure assessing stressful life events among school students in the Turkish cultural context and to investigate the relative importance of different domains of stressful life experiences in explaining symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). A total of 400 school students attending various schools participated in the study. Construct validity was evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis, while reliability was assessed through Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega coefficients. The relative contributions of the psychosocial stress domains to PTSD and CPTSD symptoms were examined using relative importance analysis. The findings demonstrated that the scale is a valid and reliable instrument for use in the Turkish cultural context. In addition, significant associations were found between psychosocial stress and both PTSD and CPTSD symptoms. The overall models explained 10.6% of the variance in PTSD symptoms and 12.1% of the variance in CPTSD symptoms. The Lindeman, Merenda, and Gold (LMG) decomposition indicated that Life Adaptation and Academic Adaptation made the two largest contributions to the explained variance in both outcomes. Although Life Adaptation had the largest numerical LMG contribution, its contribution did not differ significantly from that of Academic Adaptation. These findings suggest that stressful experiences involving life and academic adaptation may be particularly relevant to trauma-related symptoms among school students. Because the findings are based on cross-sectional associations and the partitioning of explained variance among correlated predictors, they should not be interpreted as evidence of causal effects or of the unique superiority of one stress domain. The results highlight the potential value of preventive and intervention-based child mental health efforts that consider difficulties across multiple adaptation domains.