What is it about?
This study focuses on how people may experience positive psychological changes after stressful or traumatic events, a process often referred to as posttraumatic growth. These changes can include closer relationships, a greater appreciation of life, or a stronger sense of personal strength. However, research has increasingly shown that measuring this kind of growth is not straightforward. Many commonly used questionnaires focus only on positive changes, which may lead people to report growth even when their experiences are more complex or mixed. This raises an important question: are we measuring real change, or partly how people interpret and cope with difficult events? To better capture these complexities, we adapted and validated a Polish version of an existing tool - the Stress-Related Growth Scale–Revised (SRGS-R). Unlike earlier measures, this scale uses neutral wording and allows respondents to report both positive and negative changes. We tested the Polish version on over 600 adults who had experienced at least one traumatic event. The results showed that the tool is reliable and provides a more balanced way of assessing how people change after adversity. This Polish adaptation can support both research and practice by offering a more accurate understanding of how people adjust to difficult life experiences.
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Why is it important?
This study introduces the first Polish adaptation of the Stress-Related Growth Scale-Revised, a tool designed to provide a more balanced and realistic assessment of psychological growth after trauma. Unlike earlier measures, it reduces the risk of overestimating positive change by allowing both positive and negative responses. This is especially important because it helps researchers and practitioners better distinguish between real and perceived growth. The tool can improve the quality of research on posttraumatic adaptation and support more accurate psychological assessment in clinical and applied settings.
Perspectives
Working on this study made me reflect on how complex human responses to trauma really are. While the idea of growth after adversity is powerful and widely discussed, it is equally important to examine how we measure it. Many existing tools focus mainly on positive change, which can overlook the more nuanced and sometimes contradictory nature of posttraumatic adaptation. This project was an opportunity to address that gap by introducing a tool that captures both positive and negative changes. I hope this work encourages a more balanced and careful approach to studying posttraumatic growth, one that acknowledges both resilience and struggle, and leads to a deeper understanding of how people adapt to difficult life experiences.
Maria Banasik
Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawla II
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Adaptation and validation of the Polish version of the Stress-Related Growth Scale–Revised (SRGS-R-PL)., Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy, April 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/tra0002178.
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