The Role of Patient Characteristics in the Concordance of Daily and Retrospective Reports of PTSD

- Daily and retrospective reports of emotional distress are frequently discrepant.
- Increased alcohol use weakens agreement of daily and retrospective reports of PTSD.
- Avoidance and arousal symptoms have poor agreement across assessment types.

Research has documented discrepancies between daily and retrospective reports of psychological symptoms in a variety of conditions. A limited number of studies have assessed these discrepancies in samples of individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with even less research addressing potential covariates that may influence such discrepancies. In the current study, 65 individuals with co-occurring PTSD and alcohol use disorder (AUD) completed daily assessments of their PTSD symptoms for 1 month, followed by a standard retrospective report of PTSD over the same month. Initial analyses explored the mean levels of daily and retrospective PTSD symptoms, while multilevel models assessed the level of agreement between daily and retrospective reports and the role of demographic variables and comorbid psychopathology (e.g., depression) or substance use (e.g., alcohol use) in moderating the association of daily and retrospective reports. Results showed that retrospective reports of arousal and avoidance symptoms were weakly related to daily reports of these symptoms, while reports of reexperiencing and numbing symptoms showed better agreement. Intra-individual alcohol consumption also moderated associations of reexperiencing and avoidance symptoms, such that on days individuals drank more, their daily reports resembled their retrospective reports less well. Future research should explore the degree to which these results generalize to nondually diagnosed samples, as well as the role such reporting discrepancies may play in PTSD treatment.