Alternative representations of war zone stressors: relationships to posttraumatic stress disorder in male and female Vietnam veterans.

Four conceptualizations of war zone stressor experiences were defined: traditional combat, atrocities-abusive violence, perceived threat, and malevolent environment. Items from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) were reviewed for content, and stressor indexes were created. Using retrospective self-report data from the NVVRS, intercorrelations among stressor scores and between these scores and measures of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were computed for all veterans and for men and women separately. Structural equation modeling procedures followed. Results indicated that the four stressor indexes were internally consistent, reasonably distinct from one another, and influenced PTSD differentially. Men scored significantly higher than women on all 4 indexes. Whereas the pattern of relationships among the variables was comparable across genders, there was evidence that one path coefficient in the model differed for men and women.