Skip to main content
Log in

The Traumatic Grief Inventory Self-Report (TGI-SR) as a Clinical Measure to Identify Brazilians with Prolonged Grief Disorder and Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Trends in Psychology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The aim of this study is to translate, adapt, and validate the Traumatic Grief Inventory Self-Report version (TGI-SR) to its Brazilian version. The study was conducted following the steps of translation: content validation, cognitive interviews, final test in target population, back-translation, and authors’ evaluation. The sample comprised 304 bereaved individuals from different regions of Brazil. Participants answered a sociodemographic questionnaire, a loss questionnaire and filled in the TGI-SR and the Posttraumatic Symptoms Checklist (PCL-5). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), receiver operation characteristic (ROC) analysis, and item response theory (IRT) analysis were conducted. The items were above the cut off score of the content validation index and all items were well understood by the target population (M = 4.47; SD = 0.14). The TGI-SR presented a one-dimensional factor structure; the area under the curve index pointed to a favorable predictive accuracy and indicated a cut off point with adequate sensitivity and specificity. In the IRT model, only one item presented a poor fit. Findings indicate the reliability and validity of the Brazilian TGI-SR to assess Prolonged Grief Disorder and Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder PGD and PCBD, as well as the high discriminative power of the items to differentiate individuals with and without impairment in grief.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Materials Availability

We approve free access to the Brazilian version of the TGI-SR.

References

  • Alves, T. M., Oliveira, M. C., & Lotufo-Neto, F. (2016). Diagnosis of complicated grief using the Texas Revised Inventory of Grief, Brazilian Portuguese version. Journal of Psychological and Clinical Psychiatry, 6(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.15406/jpcpy.2016.06.00316

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed. Text Revision)

  • Andrade, D. F., Tavares, H. R., & Valle, R. C. (2000).Teoria da Resposta ao Item: Conceitos e aplicações. São Paulo, Associação Brasileira de Estatística

  • Andrich, D. (1978). A rating formulation for ordered response categories. Psychometrika, 43, 561–573.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bellet, B. W., Jones, P. J., Neimeyer, R. A., & McNally, R. J. (2018). Bereavement outcomes as causal systems: A network analysis of the co-occurrence of complicated grief and posttraumatic growth. Clinical Psychological Science, 6(6), 797–809. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702618777454

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boelen, P., Djelantik, A., de Keijser, J., Lenferink, L., & Smid, G. (2018). Further validation of the Traumatic Grief Inventory-Self Report (TGI-SR): A measure of persistent complex bereavement disorder and prolonged grief disorder. Death Studies, 351–354. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2018.1480546

  • Boelen, P., & Lenferink, L. (2020). Comparison of six proposed diagnostic criteria sets for disturbed grief. Psychiatry Research, 285, 112786. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112786

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boelen, P., & Smid, G. (2017). The Traumatic Grief Inventory Self-Report Version (TGI-SR): Introduction and preliminary psychometric evaluation. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 22(3), 196–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325024.2017.1284488

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Breen, L., Penman, E., Prigerson, H., & Hewitt, L. (2015). Can grief be a mental disorder? An exploration of public opinion. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 203(8), 569–573. https://doi.org/10.1097/NMD.0000000000000331

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Buers, C., Triemstra, M., Bloemendal, E., Zwijnenberg, N. C., Hendriks, M., & Delnoij, D. M. (2014). The value of cognitive interviewing for optimizing a patient experience survey. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 17, 325–340. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2012.750830

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chalmers, R. P. (2012). mirt: A multidimensional item response theory package for the R environment. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(6), 1–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delalibera, M., Delalibera, T., Franco, M., Barbosa, A., & Leal, I. (2017). Adaptação e validação brasileira do instrument de avaliação do luto prolongado – PG-13. Revista Psicologia: Teoria e Prática, 19(1), 94–106. https://doi.org/10.5935/1980-6906/psicologia.v19n1p94-106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eisma, M. C., Lenferink, L. I. M., Chow, A. Y. M., Chan, C. L. W., & Li, J. (2019). Complicated grief and post-traumatic stress symptom profiles in bereaved earthquake survivors: A latent class analysis. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 10, 1558707. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2018.1558707

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Ferrando, P. J., & Lorenzo-Seva, U. (2017). Program FACTOR at 10: Origins, development and future directions. Psicothema, 29(2), 236–241.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hernández-Nieto, R. (2002). Contribuciones al análisis estadístico. IESINFO

  • Hinton, D. E., Field, N. P., Nickerson, A., Bryant, R. A., & Simon, N. (2013). Dreams of the dead among Cambodian refugees: Frequency, phenomenology, and relationship to complicated grief and posttraumatic stress disorder. Death Studies, 37(8). https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2012.692457

  • International Test Comission. (2017). The ITC guidelines for translating and adapting tests (2nd ed). https://www.intestcom.org/files/guideline_test_adaptation_2ed.pdf

  • Lenferink, L., Nickerson, A., Keijser, J., Smid, G., & Boelen, P. (2018). Trajectories of grief, depression and posttraumatic stress in disaster-bereaved people. Depression and Anxiety, 37(1), 35–44. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.22850

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Lichtenthal, W., Maciejewski, P., Demirjian, C., Roberts, K., First, M., Kissane, D., Neimeyer, R., Breitbart, W., Slivjak, E., Jankauskaite, G., Napolitano, S., Maercker, A., & Prigerson, H. (2018). Evidence of the clinical utility of a prolonged grief disorder diagnosis. World Psychiatry, 17(3), 364–365. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20544

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Lima, E., Vasconcelos, A., Berger, W., Kristensen, C., Nascimento, F., & Mendlowicz, M. (2016). Cross-cultural adaptation of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist 5 (PCL-5) and Life Events Checklist 5 (LEC-5) for the Brazilian context. Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, 38(4), 207–215. https://doi.org/10.1590/2237-6089-2015-0074

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lundorff, M., Holmgren, H., Zachariae, R., Farver-Vestergaard, I., & O’Connor, M. (2017). Prevalence of prolonged grief disorder in adult bereavement: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 212(1), 138–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2017.01.030

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Maciejewski, P., Maercker, A., Boelen, P., & Prigerson, H. (2016). “Prolonged grief disorder” and “persistent complex bereavement disorder”, but not “complicated grief”, are one and the same diagnostic entity: An analysis of data from the Y ale Bereavement Study. World Psychiatry, 15(3), 266–275. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20348

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Malgaroli, M., Maccallum, F., & Bonanno, G. (2018). Symptoms of persistent complex bereavement disorder, depression, and PTSD in a conjugally bereaved sample: A network analysis. Psychological Medicine, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291718001769

  • Muraki, E. (1992). A generalized partial credit model: Application of the EM algorithm. Applied Psychological Measurement, 16, 159–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neimeyer, R. A. (2016). Meaning reconstruction in the wake of loss: Evolution of a research program. Behaviour Change, 33, 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1017/bec.2016.4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nickerson, A., Liddell, B., Maccallum, F., Steel, Z., Silove, D., & Bryant, A. (2014). Posttraumatic stress disorder and prolonged grief in refugees exposed to trauma and loss. BMC Psychiatry, 14(106), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-14-106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Orlando, M., & Thissen, D. (2000). Likelihood-based item-fit indices for dichotomous item response theory models. Applied Psychological Measurement, 24(1), 50–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paris, G. F., Montigny, F., & Pelloso, S. M. (2016). Fatores associados ao estado de luto ap s bito fetal: Estudo comparativo entre brasileiras e canadenses. Revista Da Escola De Enfermagem Da u.s.p., 50(4), 546–553. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0080-623420160000500002

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pasquali, L., & Primi, R. (2003). Fundamentos da teoria da resposta ao item –TRI. Avaliação Psicológica, 2(2), 99–110.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, C. H., Peterson, N. A., & Powell, K. G. (2017). Cognitive interviewing for item development: Validity evidence based on content and responde process. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 50(4), 217–223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prigerson, H. G., Boelen, P. A., Xu, J., Smith, K., & Maciejewski, P. (2021). Validation of the new DSM-5-TR criteria for prolonged grief disorder and the PG-13-Revised (PG-13-R) scale. World Psychiatry, 20, 96–106. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20823

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Prigerson, H., Horowitz, M., Jacobs, S., Parkes, C., Aslan, M., Goodkin, K., Raphael, B., Marwit, S., Wortman, C., Neimeyer, R., Bonanno, G., Kissiane, D., Boelen, P., Maercker, A., Litz, B. T., Johnson, J. G., First, M. B., Maciejewski, P. (2009). Prolonged grief disorder: Psychometric validation of criteria proposed for DSM-V and ICD-11. PLoS Med, 6(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000121

  • Prigerson, H., & Jacobs, S. (2001). Traumatic grief as a distinct disorder: A rationale, consensus criteria and a preliminary empirical test. In M. Stroebe, R. Hansson, W. Stoebe, & H. Schut (Eds.), Handbook of bereavement research: Consequences, coping and care (pp. 613–647). American Psychological Association Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Prigerson, H. G., Maciejewski, P. K., Reynolsd, C. F., III., Bierhals, A. J., Newsom, J. T., Fasiczka, A., Frank, E., Doman, J., & Miller, M. (1995). Inventory of complicated grief: A scale to measure maladaptive symptoms of loss. Psychiatry Research, 59, 65–79.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Robinaugh, D. J., LeBlanc, N. J., Vuletich, H. A., & McNally, R. J. (2014). Network analysis of persistent complex bereavement disorder in conjugally bereaved adults. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 123, 510–522. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000002

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Samejima, F. (1997). Graded response model. In W. van der Linden & R. K. Hambleton (Eds.), Handbook of modern item response theory (pp. 85–100). Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Shear, M., Simon, N., Wall, M., Zisook, S., Neimeyer, R., Duan, N., Reynolds, C., Lebowitz, B., Sung, S., Ghesquiere, A., Gorscak, B., Clayton, P., Ito, M., Nakajima, S., Konish, T., Melhem, N., Meert, K., Schi , M., O’Connor, M. F., ... Keshaviah, A. (2011). Complicated grief and related bereavement issues for DSM-5. Depress Anxiety, 28(2), 103–117. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.20780

  • Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (2010). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: A decade on. Journal of Death and Dying, 61(4), 273–289. https://doi.org/10.2190/OM.61.4.b

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Timmerman, M. E., & Lorenzo-Seva, U. (2011). Dimensionality assessment of ordered polytomous items with parallel analysis. Psychological Methods, 16(2), 209–220. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023353

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • World Health Organization (2019).International statistical classification of diseased and related health problems (11th ed). https://icd.who.int/

Download references

Funding

This work was supported by the Coordination of Superior Level Staff Improvement (CAPES) under Grant Scholarship.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Laura Teixeira Bolaséll: project, literature revision, data collection, statistical analysis, and data discussion. Juanita Hincapié Pinzón: statistical analysis and data discussion. Paul A Boelen: data discussion and co-advising. Christian Haag Kristensen: project, data collection, data discussion, and advising.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Laura Teixeira Bolaséll.

Ethics declarations

Ethics Approval

This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (protocol number 3.636.551). All participants signed a consent form.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (PDF 136 KB)

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bolaséll, L.T., Pinzón, J.H., Boelen, P.A. et al. The Traumatic Grief Inventory Self-Report (TGI-SR) as a Clinical Measure to Identify Brazilians with Prolonged Grief Disorder and Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder. Trends in Psychol. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-023-00316-5

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-023-00316-5

Keywords

Navigation