Assessing trauma and traumatic stress via the Internet: Measurement equivalence and participant reactions.

Abstract

and course of these phenomena is needed to promote early identification and prophylaxis in this at-risk population. Internet-based surveys are a relatively new approach to data collection. This method is private, cost-effective, and time-efficient, and it has been suggested that this approach lends itself particu-larly well to the assessment of traumatic events and associated sequelae (Schlenger & Silver, 2006). As such, a growing number of researchers have opted to rely on Web-based methodologies to assess trauma and posttraumatic stress symptoms in the general population (see, e.g., Butler et al., 2005;