Doctoral level registered nurses n 3 completed the

Doctoral-level registered nurses ( n 3) completed the assess-
ments. Each had significant experience (at least 2 years) working
with women who have experienced IPV, and each followed a
safety and retention protocol during the assessments ( McFarlane,
2007 ). Assessment measures were administered verbally, in the
mother’s preferred language (English or Spanish), at a time and
location that was safe and convenient for the mothers. The major-
ity of participants completed the survey in English ( n 217;
72%). Prior to the start of the study, measures were translated from
English to Spanish by a native Spanish speaker and then were
back-translated to English by a native English speaker. Internal
consistency coefficients were similar across the English and Span-
ish versions of the measures, and there were no differences at
baseline on measured demographics (with the exception of ethnic-
ity) or study variables between participants who completed the
measures in English and Spanish.
At 5 years, 276 mothers (92%) had completed all study mea-
sures at each of the 16 assessment points. Among the 24 mothers
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
606 JOURILES ET AL.

without complete data, eight had withdrawn from the study, 15
were lost to follow-up, and one had died. Data that were available
for these 24 mother–child dyads were used in analyses. There were
no differences in demographic or study variables between the 276
mothers who had participated in each of the 16 assessments and
the 24 mothers who had not ( p s .05), but a greater proportion of
women who did not complete all 16 assessment points were
recruited from shelters compared with the district attorney’s office,
2 (1) 4.91, p .027.
Measures
All measures used in this study were collected at all 16 time
points.
Mothers’ PTSSs. Mothers reported PTSSs over the previous
4 months on a 7-item screening scale for Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric As-
sociation, 1994 ) posttraumatic stress disorder ( Breslau, Peterson,
Kessler, & Schultz, 1999 ). Mothers responded to items by indi-
cating either “yes” or “no,” and items (0 no , 1 yes ) were
summed to yield a PTSSs score with a possible range of 0 to 7.
This scale has concurrent validity with a full diagnostic interview
in clinical ( Kimerling et al., 2006 ) and community ( Bohnert &
Breslau, 2011 ; Breslau et al., 1999 ) samples. Coefficient alpha in
the present sample ranged from .70 to .79 across the 16 assess-
ments.
Children’s externalizing and internalizing problems. Mot-
hers reported on child externalizing and internalizing problems
over the previous 4 months on the Child Behavior Checklist
(CBCL), Age 1.5 to 5 years and Age 6 to 18 years ( Achenbach &
Rescorla, 2000 ). Mothers indicated the extent of child problems on
a 3-point scale (0 not true , 1 somewhat or sometimes true ,
and 2 very true or often true ). T scores were used in analyses.