Psychometric examination of the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale: a study on Chileans professionals

This study describes the psychometric examination in Chile of the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS; Bride, Robinson, Yegidis, and Figley, 2004), a scale designed in USA to measure symptoms of intrusion, avoidance and arousal associated with indirect exposure of professionals to traumatic events. A sample of 255 Chilean professional that treated traumatized victims completed the local version of the STSS, a burnout inventory and a demographic information questionnaire. The STSS proved to be a reliable and valid instrument. In particular, the scale showed adequate convergent validity when correlating, as expected, with the levels of depression, anxiety, and burnout of professionals. Also, the absence of significant correlations between the STSS and the age and the income of participants supported the discrimination validity of the scale. Contrary to expectations, the STSS did not correlate with the extent to which the patients were traumatized nor with the frequency with which their work addresses the traumatic experiences of their clients. Finally, the STSS items adopted an unifactorial configuration.