Should Subjects Be Forewarned of the Possible Psychological Consequences of Filling Out a PTSD Questionnaire?

In 1993 Albach investigated the long-term consequences of sexual abuse on psychological health. A group of abused women and a control group of non-abused women were asked to fill in a questionnaire assessing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). For ethical reasons, the abused women were warned that filling in the questionnaire might be emotionally stressful. The control group did not receive this warning. The abused women scored higher on the questionnaire than the non-abused women. The warning they received may have influenced their reports. Our experiment investigated this 101 psychology students were divided into two groups, one who received a warning and a control group who did not. The hypothesis was that people who had been previously warned would score higher on a PTSD questionnaire than people who had not. There were, however, no significant differences in mean PTSD scores and no known initial differences between groups.