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Development and psychometric evaluation of the mental readiness for military transition scale (MT-Ready)
BACKGROUND: The transition to civilian life following separation from military service is associated with increased risk of mental health disorders, suicide, and poor adjustment. No measure currently enables pre-separation screening to assess mental readiness for transition and identify personnel mo...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10410831/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37553664 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-023-05032-z |
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author | Romaniuk, Madeline Fisher, Gina Sunderland, Matthew Batterham, Philip J. |
author_facet | Romaniuk, Madeline Fisher, Gina Sunderland, Matthew Batterham, Philip J. |
author_sort | Romaniuk, Madeline |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The transition to civilian life following separation from military service is associated with increased risk of mental health disorders, suicide, and poor adjustment. No measure currently enables pre-separation screening to assess mental readiness for transition and identify personnel most at risk of poor outcomes. The Mental Readiness for Military Transition Scale (MT-Ready) was developed to identify psychosocial factors predictive of post-separation psychological adjustment and mental health. METHODS: Phase I was a qualitative study including transitioned veterans (n = 60), partners of transitioned veterans (n = 20) and mental health clinicians (n = 20) which enabled development of candidate items that were subsequently piloted with a current serving Australian Defence Force (ADF) sample (n = 19). Phase II included evaluation of the factor structure, psychometric properties, and scale refinement of the initial pool of 50 items with a convenience sample of transitioning ADF personnel (n = 345). Analyses included exploratory factor analysis, evaluation of test-retest reliability, internal consistency, convergent, divergent, discriminant and predictive validity. Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve Analysis was also conducted to determine an optimal cut-off score. RESULTS: Exploratory factor analysis resulted in a 15-item, three-factor solution that explained 62.2% of the variance: Future focus and optimism; Anger and perceived failure; Civilian connections and social support. Reliability and convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity was established. Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve Analysis determined a cut-off score of 55. MT-Ready scores significantly differentiated those reporting adjusting versus not adjusting to civilian life 3.7 months post-separation, and predicted post-separation outcomes including symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, depression, anxiety, psychological adjustment and quality of life. CONCLUSIONS: This evaluation provides promising evidence the MT-Ready is a valid, reliable measure of mental readiness for transition, with predictive capability and considerable potential to assist prevention of poor post-separation outcomes among military personnel. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-023-05032-z. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10410831 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104108312023-08-10 Development and psychometric evaluation of the mental readiness for military transition scale (MT-Ready) Romaniuk, Madeline Fisher, Gina Sunderland, Matthew Batterham, Philip J. BMC Psychiatry Research BACKGROUND: The transition to civilian life following separation from military service is associated with increased risk of mental health disorders, suicide, and poor adjustment. No measure currently enables pre-separation screening to assess mental readiness for transition and identify personnel most at risk of poor outcomes. The Mental Readiness for Military Transition Scale (MT-Ready) was developed to identify psychosocial factors predictive of post-separation psychological adjustment and mental health. METHODS: Phase I was a qualitative study including transitioned veterans (n = 60), partners of transitioned veterans (n = 20) and mental health clinicians (n = 20) which enabled development of candidate items that were subsequently piloted with a current serving Australian Defence Force (ADF) sample (n = 19). Phase II included evaluation of the factor structure, psychometric properties, and scale refinement of the initial pool of 50 items with a convenience sample of transitioning ADF personnel (n = 345). Analyses included exploratory factor analysis, evaluation of test-retest reliability, internal consistency, convergent, divergent, discriminant and predictive validity. Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve Analysis was also conducted to determine an optimal cut-off score. RESULTS: Exploratory factor analysis resulted in a 15-item, three-factor solution that explained 62.2% of the variance: Future focus and optimism; Anger and perceived failure; Civilian connections and social support. Reliability and convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity was established. Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve Analysis determined a cut-off score of 55. MT-Ready scores significantly differentiated those reporting adjusting versus not adjusting to civilian life 3.7 months post-separation, and predicted post-separation outcomes including symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, depression, anxiety, psychological adjustment and quality of life. CONCLUSIONS: This evaluation provides promising evidence the MT-Ready is a valid, reliable measure of mental readiness for transition, with predictive capability and considerable potential to assist prevention of poor post-separation outcomes among military personnel. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-023-05032-z. BioMed Central 2023-08-08 /pmc/articles/PMC10410831/ /pubmed/37553664 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-023-05032-z Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Romaniuk, Madeline Fisher, Gina Sunderland, Matthew Batterham, Philip J. Development and psychometric evaluation of the mental readiness for military transition scale (MT-Ready) |
title | Development and psychometric evaluation of the mental readiness for military transition scale (MT-Ready) |
title_full | Development and psychometric evaluation of the mental readiness for military transition scale (MT-Ready) |
title_fullStr | Development and psychometric evaluation of the mental readiness for military transition scale (MT-Ready) |
title_full_unstemmed | Development and psychometric evaluation of the mental readiness for military transition scale (MT-Ready) |
title_short | Development and psychometric evaluation of the mental readiness for military transition scale (MT-Ready) |
title_sort | development and psychometric evaluation of the mental readiness for military transition scale (mt-ready) |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10410831/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37553664 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-023-05032-z |
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