1. A Reliability Generalization Study: Examining Grief with the TRIG
Samuel A. Montano, M.A.
Jennifer L. Harrison, M.A.
Douglas A. Graves, Psy.D.
Siobhan K. O’Toole, Ph.D.
CSPP at Alliant International University
Fresno, CA

2. The Texas Revised Inventory of Grief (TRIG)
One of the most widely used grief instrument (Futterman, et al., 2010; Monk, Pfoff, & Zarotny, 2013).
Rationale of the current study:
To examine the reliability and generalizability of the TRIG.
The TRIG is an instrument aimed at “quantifying and measure the intensity of grief reactions (Faschingbauer, Zisook, & Devaul, 1981).”

3. The Details of the TRIG Has two main scales: Part I: Past Scale
Subjects asked to “think back to the time this person died” when responding to the items.
8 total items
Rated on a 5 point Likert scale
1= Completely True; 2= Mostly True; 3=True & False; 4= Mostly False; 5= Completely False
Example:
“After this person died I found it hard to get along with certain people.”

4. The Details of the TRIG Part II: Present Scale
Measures present levels of grief
13 Items
Rated on a 5 point Likert Scale
1= Completely True; 2= Mostly True; 3=True & False; 4= Mostly False; 5= Completely False
Example:
“I still cry when I think about this person.”
“I feel it’s unfair that this person died.”
Point one. Thus, subjects are asked to answer items by endorsing how they presently feel about the deceased person.

5. Original Study: Faschingbauer, Zisook, & DeVaul (1976)
Reported the following alpha coefficients:
Past Scale .77
Present Scale .86

6. Methods: Created Coding Form (See Handout) Database search:
EbscoHost
Journal Articles
Dissertations
Book Chapter
Revealed: 139 (total)
70 articles
68 dissertations
1 book chapter
Excluded: 42
Language
Did not use the TRIG
Did not indicate reliability information

7. Note from Jenna: I copy and pasted this in here but it doesn’t seem like it will be very readable from a distance, so we can delete this slide if needed. Just figured I would try as I saw that you had referenced a handout – as if you were going to pass something out with this on it, Sam? Just a thought.

8. Current Study Sample Variables Dummy coded Continuous
Sex: > 65% female ≤ 65% female
Race/Ethnicity: > 60% Caucasian Other
Country: USA Outside the USA
Source of Grief: Immediate family Other
Publication Type: Journal article Dissertation
Continuous
Sample Size
Mean Age
Publication Year
Standard Deviation of TRIG
Mean Time Since Death
Talking points:
-In familiarizing with the TRIG, we wanted to look at several variables that might have an effect on measuring grief across cultures
--We used a “Dummy coding” system where we tracked a number of demographic variables with different categories:
i.e. Sex: Since most of the research measuring loss looks at female participants, it was easiest to capture this by identifying the female participant % sample
--0% Female, <35%, 35-65%, >65%, 100%, and Unknown if no further description or information about the participant sample was provided
Race: We tracked White, Hispanic, Asian, Black, no predominant race, and Unknown
Source of Grief was most commonly noted as either death of a close family member or friend
Other Variables we wanted to look at Continuously in order to track and measure change cross-culturally:
-We were able to look at the sample size of each study, the mean age of participants administered the TRIG (given after the loss of a loved one), as well as pub. Year of the study to see if there were any time periods of more significance, SD of TRIG results, and mean amount of time since the death of the loved one (as this was thought to have an impact on how an individual would answer the questions: i.e. more recent death versus death from a long time ago – individual may likely respond differently as he/she would likely be in different stages of grief – Kubler-Ross…)

9. Overall Reliability N
Minimum
Maximum
Mean
Std. Deviation
Past 32
.63
.92
.82
.07
Present 39
.81
.95
.90
.04
Present subscale yields significantly higher reliability
t(31) = -6.78, p < .01
More reliable than normative sample (Faschingbauer, 1976)
TRIG-Part 1 (Past): 0.77 normative sample
TRIG-Part II (Present): 0.86 normative sample
Talking points:
-38 of 139 articles reported a reliability estimate based upon the data for their study
--All other articles (101) cited a previous source’s reliability data (most frequently the normative sample from the original study – Faschinbauer, 1976), or they stated, *literally* “It is reliable” without providing any data as evidentiary support, or didn’t report any information on the TRIG’s reliability, or clearly indicated the study was a Pilot; as such, none of these articles were able to be included in the analysis
-OVERALL, TRIG demonstrated strong reliability:
--.90 present (part 2)* This was significant, (p<.01)
--.82 past (part 1)

10. Box & Whiskers Plots Talking points
-You can see on this Box and Whisker Plot that the mean for each subscale at .82 and .90 (Past and Present, respectively) are right here in the solid lines within the blue boxes (representing the minimum and maximum scores), so the Present subscale had higher reliability of the two.
-You can also see that the SD (.07) for the Past subscale shows that the scores are much more spread out from the mean and had a much wider distribution of scores that represented grief measuring past experiences; whereas the smaller SD (.04) for the Present subscale is less distributed, showing the scores measuring present experiences of grief were much closer in number, and more consistent across participant responses; thus, demonstrating higher reliability

11. Analysis of continuous data
Scale SD
Pub
Year
Sample Size
Mean Age
Mean Time Since Death
TRIG Past
.08
.31
.18
-.10
-.72**
TRIG Present
.23
-.07
.03
.11
Talking points:
-We also looked at Pearson Correlations to see if anything else was significant
--A couple things to look at here. Hover with presentation laser…
-As we go across this table here, you can see we found a significant negative, strong relationship between time since death and the past subscale. This meant that the less time that had passed since losing a loved one, the more reliable their past measure of grief. This makes sense given that someone who just lost someone would better remember their grief experience having just gone through that recently. This was significant at the P<.05 level.
--Also, we found significance at the p<.01 level for pub year and samp size & pub year and mean age. So, as the research was approaching more current studies, we found that research studies were looking at much smaller sample sizes, and much younger participants
---This could be because many of the analyses included dissertations, as well as a majority of the research samples utilized either convenience or purposive sampling for participants, ultimately likely placing limitations on the sample size available

12. Talking points:
-In looking at these particular variables, you can see a general commonality in that all have slightly smaller SDs associated with the present subscale. This suggests that the range of scores were much closer to the mean, indicating slightly higher reliability across these variables for the present subscale than for the past subscale.
--This suggests that the present subscale seems to best capture individuals’ grief experience –with higher temporal stability as evidenced by controlling for a number of variables such as individuals’ source of grief, race/ethnicity, gender, and country/location; and notably, this is also consistent across cultures (hover over country within the US and outside the US), further showing its worldwide utility as a measure of grief (as a universal experience)

13. Conclusions
Overall
TRIG is a reliable measure for grief, especially for present experiences*
Time since death significantly related to past subscale*
Lack of significance for any sample variables*
Talking points:
-Overall, we found the TRIG to demonstrate strong reliability, suggesting it serves as an effective measure of someone’s experience of grief, even across cultures
-We also found a large correlation in that mean time since loss was sig. related to reliability, suggesting that the measure further captures an individual’s experience of grief across cultures the more recent the loss of the loved one; thus the past scale is not very reliable if it has been very long since death
-Reasons for why the present grief might be more reliable? People’s experience is better captured as it is a current snapshot of their experience, whereas past experience may not be recalled as clearly for some individuals in the grief process; or it could be that an individual currently going through the grief process is closer tied to that recent experience than those of past experiences due to natural passing of time and moving on
-Also important to note here with this cross-cultural research, we did not find any significance among any of the sample variables (things we tracked such as gender of sample, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.), so the TRIG seems to hold up across cultures

14. Limitations & Future Research
Other variables difficult to track from inconsistencies within research
Level of education, religion/spirituality, sexual orientation
Many studies are not reporting reliability based on their data – this is a problem for researchers utilizing reliability generalization
-Our sample was limited with a high sample of Caucasians; other variables that could yield more fruitful information for future research could be level of education, religion/spirituality, and sexual orientation
--Religion/spirituality in particular as this likely can serve to explain how one copes with loss as a source of strength or explanation for the loss
--would be interesting to see if there is a difference with the LGBT population, certainly more research with this population is warranted for support during the grieving process due to various stigmas likely experienced
-Encourage researchers using this measure to report Alpha’s Cronbach values based on their study’s data, this can help researchers like us utilizing meta-analytic techniques in measuring an instrument’s cross-cultural validity for use with populations around the world as grief is a universal experience

15. Questions? Siobhan K. O’Toole sotoole@alliant.edu
Doug Graves