Measuring psychological trauma in the workplace: psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Psychological Injury Risk Indicator (PIRI). A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: The aim of this study was to cross-culturally adapt the Psychological Injury Risk Indicator (PIRI) and to validate its psychometric properties. Methods: Workers from 24 small companies were invited to self-complete the PIRI before undergoing their routine medical examination at the workplace. All participants (841 out of 845, 99.6%) were also asked to report occupational injuries and episodes of violence that had occurred at the workplace in the previous 12 months and were given the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ12) to complete. Results: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed a 4-factor structure: “sleep problems”, “recovery failure”, “post-traumatic stress symptoms”, “chronic fatigue”, which were the same subscales observed in the original version. The internal consistency was excellent (alpha= 0.932). Correlation between the PIRI scores and GHQ12 showed good criterion validity. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed that the PIRI was much more efficient than GHQ12 in diagnosing workers who had suffered trauma (workplace violence or injury) in the previous year, as it revealed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.679 (95% CI: 0.625-0.734) for the PIRI, while for the GHQ12, the area under the curve was 0.551 (not significant). Conclusions: This study, performed on a large population of workers, provides evidence of the validity of the Italian version of the PIRI.