Psychometric properties of the German version of the Depressive and Anxious Avoidance in Prolonged Grief Questionnaire (DAAPGQ)

The Depressive and Anxious Avoidance in Prolonged Grief Questionnaire (DAAPGQ) was developed to measure depressive and anxious avoidance behaviors, which, according to cognitive-behavioral models, are supposed to play an important role in the development and maintenance of prolonged grief. The prese...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2021-08, Vol.16 (8), p.e0254959-e0254959
Main Authors: Treml, Julia, Nagl, Michaela, Braehler, Elmar, Boelen, Paul A, Kersting, Anette
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Authorship
Avoidance
Avoidance behavior
Behavior
Biology and Life Sciences
Cognitive ability
Consistency
Convergence
Correlation
Depression, Mental
Diagnosis
Evaluation
Grief
Informed consent
Language
Medicine
Medicine and Health Sciences
Mental depression
Post traumatic stress disorder
Psychosomatic medicine
Psychotherapy
Quantitative psychology
Questionnaires
Reliability analysis
Reliability aspects
Research and Analysis Methods
Skewness
Social Sciences
Sociodemographics
Statistical analysis
Validity
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Summary:The Depressive and Anxious Avoidance in Prolonged Grief Questionnaire (DAAPGQ) was developed to measure depressive and anxious avoidance behaviors, which, according to cognitive-behavioral models, are supposed to play an important role in the development and maintenance of prolonged grief. The present study aimed to develop a German version of the DAAPGQ and evaluate its psychometric properties and validity within a representative sample of the German general population (N = 2531). The German-language DAAPGQ was developed using a forward-backward translation procedure. Then, a subsample of individuals who reported having lost a significant other (N = 1371) of a representative sample was assessed with the German DAAPGQ, along with information on sociodemographic characteristics, prolonged grief symptom severity (PG-13), general anxiety (GAD-2) and depression (PHQ-2). The factor structure of the DAAPGQ was evaluated using confirmatory factor analyses, reliability by calculating internal consistency on subscale level and convergent validity by correlations between DAAPQG subscale sores with PG-13, GAD-2 and PHQ-2 sum scores. As expected, a two-factor model with correlated latent variables showed good fit to the data, replicating findings from the original version. Internal consistency was high for both subscales (Cronbach's [alpha] .86 and .95, respectively). Convergent validity was established by theoretically expected and statistically significant positive correlations of DAAPGQ subscales with symptom severity of prolonged grief, depression, and anxiety and negative correlations with time since loss. Furthermore, the addition of depressive and anxious avoidance significantly improved the prediction of prolonged grief symptom severity over sociodemographic and loss-related information. In sum, our results suggest that the German-language DAAPGQ is a reliable and valid measure of depressive and anxious avoidance and a useful tool to improve our knowledge on the role of avoidance in prolonged grief. We also provide descriptive data to improve the applicability of the DAAPGQ for individual diagnostics.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0254959