Validation of the Korean version of the impact of event scale-revised in disaster victims using the Rasch model

This study is to verify the validity of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) by reflecting the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) structure and gender differences of disaster victims with the Rasch model. The analysis is based on 2,253 disaster victims in South Korea. Results reveal that items on sleep problems are inappropriate in accounting for the concept of this scale. The difficulty of the item was highly recognised by disaster victims. It was found that there were items that functioned differently by gender. Further studies need to verify the items considering cultural and disaster-related contexts for adjusting the difficulty of the items.