The SSAGA-IV assesses for PTSD using a modified version of the Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire (Kubany et al., 2000). Assessment is conditional, meaning an interviewee must endorse one or more traumatic experiences on the checklist. These experiences encapsulate a variety of experiences that are exceedingly distressing, terrifying, or life-threatening, and which we have sorted into categories representing physical violence, sexual violence, and non-assaultive trauma exposure. We defined these three broad categories as follows: physical assault means subjects had been shot, stabbed, mugged or threatened with a weapon, tortured, or held captive. Sexual assault meant unwanted penetration or touching by an object or body part. Non-assaultive trauma included events such as witnessing the death of another person, having a motor vehicle accident, experiencing natural disaster, being poisoned with dioxin, diagnosis with a life-threatening illness, experiencing a life-threatening injury, sudden death of a close family member, friend or relative, unexpectedly discovering a dead body, learning of a traumatic event that happened to another person, or experiencing any other event that the subject found especially terrifying or life-threatening. If Criterion A (trauma exposure) was met, subjects were included in the analysis.
