Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory (TRGI)

1. Abstract

The Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory (TRGI) is an empirically derived, multidimensional self-report psychometric instrument designed to evaluate event-specific guilt and guilt-related cognitive appraisals among survivors of psychological trauma. Developed by Edward S. Kubany and colleagues in 1996, the TRGI addresses the critical conceptual distinction between emotional distress, global guilt affect, and specific maladaptive cognitions related to traumatic events. The scale comprises 32 items categorized into three primary scales: Global Guilt, Distress, and Guilt Cognitions. The Guilt Cognitions scale is further partitioned into three distinct, empirically validated subscales: Hindsight-Bias/Responsibility, Wrongdoing, and Lack of Justification. Items are rated on 5-point Likert scales calibrated across dimensions of perceived truth, frequency, and severity. Psychometric investigations across diverse clinical cohorts—including combat veterans, survivors of intimate partner violence, and adult survivors of physical or sexual assault—demonstrate that the TRGI exhibits exceptional internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from .89 to .91 for primary scales, and .60 to .79 for cognitive subscales), robust construct and convergent validity, and high sensitivity to therapeutic change. As an essential diagnostic and treatment-planning tool, the TRGI elucidates irrational cognitive distortions that maintain chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder, and moral injury, providing clinicians and researchers with an objective basis for targeted cognitive restructuring.

2. Keywords

Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory, TRGI, trauma-related guilt, posttraumatic stress disorder, moral injury, cognitive appraisals, hindsight bias, perceived responsibility, Kubany, psychometrics, survivor guilt, cognitive trauma therapy.

3. Authors

The Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory was developed by an interdisciplinary team of clinical psychologists and psychometric researchers specializing in traumatic stress, cognitive-behavioral assessment, and veteran mental health:

• Edward S. Kubany, Ph.D. (Principal Investigator, deceased): Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD, Pacific Islands Division, Honolulu, Hawaii; and the Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dr. Kubany was an internationally recognized clinical psychologist whose pioneering work advanced cognitive therapy for trauma-related guilt (CT-TRG) and cognitive trauma therapy for battered women (CTT-BW).
• Stephen N. Haynes, Ph.D.: Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii. An authority in behavioral assessment, psychometric theory, and clinical functional analysis.
• Francis R. Abueg, Ph.D.: National Center for PTSD, Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Palo Alto, California; and Stanford University School of Medicine. Noted for his contributions to the assessment and treatment of combat-related posttraumatic psychopathology and dual-diagnosis trauma populations.
• Frank P. Manke, Ph.D.: Department of Veterans Affairs, Honolulu, Hawaii. Co-developer of early cognitive protocols targeting guilt appraisal processes in military service personnel.
• Julie M. Brennan, Ph.D.: Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii. Specialist in clinical psychometrics and trauma adaptation.
• Camille Stahura, M.A.: Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii. Research psychometrist involved in standardizing trauma assessment methodologies.

4. Purpose

The primary clinical and psychometric purpose of the Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory (TRGI) is to operationalize, isolate, and quantify the multi-faceted cognitive and affective components of guilt tied directly to specific traumatic life events. Guilt is among the most pervasive, treatment-refractory, and debilitating sequelae of severe psychological trauma. Historically, trauma assessments concentrated almost exclusively on fear-conditioned symptoms (e.g., autonomic hyperarousal, intrusive re-experiencing, and behavioral avoidance) as delineated in earlier revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. However, clinical presentations frequently reveal that intense emotional suffering, severe depression, persistent suicidality, and functional impairment after trauma are maintained not merely by conditioned fear, but by severe internal self-blame, perceived moral transgression, and agonizing remorse.

Prior to the development of the TRGI, researchers and clinicians lacked a psychometrically validated, trauma-specific instrument that could separate non-cognitive guilt distress from cognitive distortions. General guilt measures (such as the Test of Self-Conscious Affect or the Situational Guilt Scale) measure dispositional trait guilt or benign daily transgressions (e.g., forgetting a colleague’s birthday), failing to capture the profound existential devastation, survivor guilt, and retrospective self-condemnation typical of combat, severe interpersonal assault, or catastrophic loss. The TRGI was specifically engineered to fill this empirical void.

From a clinical standpoint, the TRGI serves several critical functions:

• Diagnostic Deconstruction: It disaggregates global, diffuse distress into actionable cognitive targets. By pinpointing whether an individual’s guilt is driven primarily by retrospective hindsight bias, perceived violation of internalized morals, or a perceived lack of justification, clinicians can formulate precise cognitive case conceptualizations.
• Treatment Planning and Cognitive Restructuring: It provides a baseline profile that guides manualized interventions, such as Kubany’s Cognitive Therapy for Trauma-Related Guilt (CT-TRG), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and Prolonged Exposure. When clinicians discover that a patient exhibits high hindsight bias but low intrinsic wrongdoing scores, intervention efforts can directly target hindsight heuristics rather than moral repair.
• Treatment Outcome Monitoring: Administered longitudinally, the TRGI detects subtle, incremental shifts in cognitive reappraisal across the course of psychotherapy, offering objective validation of therapeutic gains.
• Research on Moral Injury and PTSD: In empirical traumatology, the TRGI operates as a gold-standard assessment tool for modeling the structural relationships between cognitive distortions, moral injury, chronic posttraumatic stress, complicated grief, and secondary affective disorders.

5. Psychological Construct

The TRGI measures trauma-related guilt through an empirically grounded, multidimensional construct framework. Guilt, in the context of traumatic stress, is conceptualized as an unpleasant, cognitively mediated emotional state characterized by the belief that one has caused or failed to prevent a catastrophic outcome, violated an important moral or ethical code, or acted without sufficient justification. Kubany and colleagues demonstrated that posttraumatic guilt cannot be treated as a monolithic affective state; rather, it is maintained by distinct cognitive architectures interacting with severe negative affect. The TRGI delineates these mechanisms across three major scales and three specific cognitive subscales:

Global Guilt Scale

The Global Guilt scale assesses the overall subjective intensity, frequency, and severity of the felt emotional experience of guilt tied to the designated traumatic event. Rather than dissecting specific logical fallacies, this scale captures the total phenomenological burden of perceived guilt. It measures the extent to which the individual feels guilty in an omnibus sense, how frequently these guilt states arise, and the intensity of subjective self-reproach. Items assess both categorical presence and dimensional depth (e.g., ratings ranging from ‘not guilty at all’ to ‘extremely guilty’).

Distress Scale

Trauma survivors frequently confound the profound pain, grief, sorrow, and autonomic arousal elicited by a tragedy with the emotion of guilt. The Distress scale was explicitly constructed to isolate general trauma-related emotional distress from guilt per se. It captures emotional pain, sorrow, grief over devastating outcomes, continuous emotional suffering, and somatic reactivity (e.g., physical sweating, muscle tension, dry mouth upon recall). Disentangling pure distress from cognitive guilt is paramount: an individual may experience catastrophic sorrow over the loss of a comrade or family member without logically bearing responsibility. The Distress scale provides an essential discriminant baseline in clinical evaluations.

Guilt Cognitions Scale

The Guilt Cognitions scale encapsulates the primary cognitive drivers of trauma-related guilt. It aggregates the cognitive appraisals through which trauma survivors evaluate their past behaviors, thoughts, and emotional reactions during and immediately following the traumatic crisis. This overarching scale is composed of three interconnected yet distinct cognitive subscales:

• 1. Hindsight-Bias/Responsibility Subscale: This subscale assesses the cognitive distortion wherein individuals judge their past actions based on outcome knowledge that was impossible to possess at the time of the event. Survivors routinely fall prey to the ‘knew-it-all-along’ heuristic, maintaining beliefs such as “I should have known better” or “I could have prevented what happened.” It captures retrospective self-blame, inflated personal causal responsibility for outcomes that were outside realistic human control, and the failure to recognize situational constraints.
• 2. Wrongdoing Subscale: This dimension measures the subjective perception that one’s actions, thoughts, or emotions violated intrinsic personal ethics, societal values, or sacred rules of conduct. In traumatic circumstances, survivors often evaluate non-volitional psychological phenomena—such as experiencing numbness, feeling relief upon survival, freezing under lethal terror, or having involuntary taboo thoughts—as moral transgressions (e.g., “I did something that went against my values”; “I had some feelings that I should not have had”).
• 3. Lack of Justification Subscale: This subscale measures the belief that one’s behavior during the trauma was arbitrary, irrational, unjustified, or unforgivable. Individuals scoring high on this scale negate the presence of valid, compelling reasons for their actions under extreme life-or-death duress (e.g., reversing items such as “What I did made sense” or endorsing “What I did was not justified in any way”). Restoring an awareness of why a chosen action was the most logical survival option available is central to resolving this cognitive deficit.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory is derived directly from cognitive appraisal theories of emotion (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), attribution theory (Weiner, 1985), and Kubany’s multi-component model of guilt (Kubany & Manke, 1995; Kubany & Watson, 2003). In classical cognitive theory, emotional reactions do not stem directly from an objective event, but from the subjective cognitive appraisal of that event. In traumatic contexts, catastrophic outcomes provoke reflexive efforts to assign causality, meaning, and culpability.

Kubany’s theoretical model posits that guilt is generated when an individual processes a negative outcome through four necessary cognitive conditions:

1. Perceived Causation/Responsibility: The survivor believes that their personal action or inaction caused the traumatic outcome.
2. Perceived Insufficiency of Justification: The survivor believes that there were no valid, compelling reasons or survival imperatives that justified their behavior.
3. Perceived Violation of Moral/Value Standards: The survivor appraises the action or inaction as a direct breach of internalized moral, ethical, or legal values.
4. Perceived Foreseeability and Preventability (Hindsight Bias): The survivor retroactively concludes that they should have anticipated the disaster and acted differently to prevent it.

The model explicitly conceptualizes hindsight bias as a foundational cognitive error. When a traumatic event concludes, the survivor possesses full knowledge of the horrific outcome. Retrospectively, this outcome appears foreseeable, inevitable, and preventable. The survivor systematically discounts the extreme chaos, cognitive overload, physiological tunnel vision, sensory deprivation, and incomplete information that governed their decision-making in the critical moments of the event. Consequently, the individual constructs irrational causal attributions, concluding: “Because I can now see how it could have been avoided, I should have seen it then.”

Furthermore, Kubany integrated the critical role of evaluative language and moral standards into the etiology of chronic posttraumatic stress. In military personnel and victims of domestic violence, trauma frequently violates the core schema of a benevolent, predictable, and fair world. When survivors engage in catastrophic internal, stable, and global attributions—labeling their actions ‘unforgivable’—guilt transforms into pervasive shame and self-directed hostility. The TRGI provides empirical operationalization for these precise cognitive appraisal vectors, making it congruent with modern concepts of moral injury.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the TRGI was rigorously established through extensive empirical investigations involving diverse clinical and non-clinical trauma-exposed cohorts, including Vietnam combat veterans, battered women residing in domestic violence shelters, adult survivors of sexual assault, and university students reporting acute life traumas (Kubany et al., 1996).

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity was confirmed by demonstrating that the TRGI successfully separates emotional distress from specific guilt cognitions. In the validation studies conducted by Kubany et al. (1996), factor-analytic solutions corroborated that while the Global Guilt scale, Distress scale, and Guilt Cognitions subscales are intercorrelated, they capture distinct statistical variance. Distress loaded independently from the cognitive appraisal dimensions, confirming that survivors can suffer profound sorrow and pain regarding a tragedy without necessarily endorsing irrational beliefs of responsibility or moral wrongdoing.

Convergent Validity

The convergent validity of the TRGI has been demonstrated through strong, statistically significant correlations with established trauma, depression, and guilt measures:

• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: TRGI scales correlate significantly with standardized PTSD measures, including the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD (correlations ranging between .45 and .70, p < .001). Guilt Cognitions strongly predicted PTSD symptom severity even after controlling for demographic variables.
• Depression and Negative Affect: TRGI Global Guilt and Distress scales display robust positive correlations with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; correlations ranging from .50 to .68), confirming the clinical reality that unresolved trauma guilt is closely tied to depressive symptomatology and hopelessness.
• General Guilt Measures: The TRGI exhibits moderate to high correlations with general guilt indices, such as the Perceived Guilt Scale and the Trauma-Related Guilt Scale, while demonstrating superior predictive utility for trauma-specific distress.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by comparing TRGI performance against measures of unrelated constructs, such as social desirability and general anxiety traits. Correlations between TRGI subscales and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale were consistently non-significant or negligible (ranging from -.05 to -.14), demonstrating that TRGI responses are free from significant social desirability bias. Furthermore, the TRGI successfully discriminated between trauma survivors who had developed PTSD and trauma-exposed individuals who remained resilient, with clinical PTSD cohorts exhibiting significantly elevated scores across all Guilt Cognitions subscales.

Predictive and Treatment Validity

The TRGI demonstrates outstanding treatment sensitivity. In clinical trials evaluating Cognitive Therapy for Trauma-Related Guilt (CT-TRG) and Cognitive Trauma Therapy for Battered Women (CTT-BW; Kubany et al., 2003, 2004), significant reductions in TRGI Guilt Cognitions and Global Guilt scores systematically preceded or accompanied dramatic decreases in PTSD symptom severity. The scale effectively captures cognitive restructuring in real time, validating its utility as a treatment outcome benchmark.

8. Reliability

The Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory exhibits outstanding internal consistency and temporal stability across a wide variety of clinical and community populations.

Internal Consistency

In the initial psychometric validation across samples of combat veterans and survivors of domestic violence (Kubany et al., 1996), the primary scales demonstrated excellent internal consistency coefficients:

• Global Guilt Scale: Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients consistently ranged from .89 to .91 across diverse cohorts, reflecting high item homogeneity in capturing overall felt guilt.
• Distress Scale: Displayed alpha coefficients ranging from .89 to .91, indicating exceptional reliability in measuring the emotional and physiological distress accompanying trauma recall.
• Guilt Cognitions Overall Scale: Demonstrated robust internal consistency, with $lpha$ coefficients typically exceeding .90.

For the specific Guilt Cognitions subscales, internal consistency coefficients were found to be psychometrically sound, especially given the concise number of items per subscale:

• Hindsight-Bias/Responsibility Subscale: $lpha$ coefficients ranged between .74 and .79.
• Wrongdoing Subscale: $lpha$ coefficients ranged between .68 and .75.
• Lack of Justification Subscale: $lpha$ coefficients ranged between .60 and .72. (The slightly lower alpha is characteristic of brief cognitive scales measuring context-dependent justification appraisals).

Test-Retest Reliability

Temporal stability was evaluated across 2- to 4-week test-retest intervals in stable trauma-exposed cohorts not undergoing active cognitive interventions. Test-retest reliability coefficients ($r_{tt}$) were consistently robust:

• Global Guilt: $r_{tt} = .83$ to $.86$
• Distress: $r_{tt} = .79$ to $.84$
• Guilt Cognitions (Full Scale): $r_{tt} = .81$ to $.87$

These values demonstrate that the TRGI reliably measures enduring cognitive-affective appraisal structures over time, while remaining sensitive to genuine clinical changes resulting from targeted psychotherapy.

9. Factor Analysis

The dimensional structure of the TRGI was rigorously examined through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) during scale development and cross-validation studies (Kubany et al., 1996, 2000; Lacerenza, 2012).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In the primary development phase, an initial pool of trauma-relevant cognitive and affective items was administered to clinical cohorts. Principal Axis Factoring with both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax/Oblimin) rotations was conducted. Because emotional distress and cognitive appraisals are theoretically correlated in traumatized populations, oblique rotation provided the most psychologically valid and parsimonious solution.

The factor extraction process yielded a clean, highly interpretable factor solution that separated affective reactions from cognitive appraisals:

• Distress Factor: Items tapping emotional pain, grief, severe distress, and autonomic physical reactions (e.g., sweating, muscle tension) loaded heavily on an independent factor (loadings from .65 to .84), with minimal cross-loadings on cognitive dimensions.
• Global Guilt Factor: Items directly capturing the intensity, frequency, and severity of feeling guilty loaded cohesively on a separate factor (loadings from .72 to .88).
• Cognitive Appraisal Factors: Factor analysis of the guilt cognitions domain isolated three distinct second-order factors corresponding directly to Kubany’s multi-component model: Hindsight-Bias/Responsibility (items capturing perceived prevention and retrospective blame), Wrongdoing (items tapping violation of values and beliefs), and Lack of Justification (items reflecting whether actions were perceived as justified or sensible). Factor loadings across these subscales ranged reliably between .45 and .82.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

Subsequent cross-validation studies using CFA on independent samples confirmed the superiority of the multidimensional, hierarchical model over unidimensional or single-cognitive-factor models. Fit indices indicated strong structural validity:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values consistently exceeded .92 to .95, indicating excellent model fit.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates ranged between .048 and .062, confirming low residual error.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Observed below .06.

These factor-analytic findings provide definitive empirical confirmation that posttraumatic guilt is structurally complex, validating the clinical necessity of scoring the TRGI across its constituent subscales rather than relying solely on a single aggregate score.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory (TRGI) is structured as a standardized, self-report psychometric questionnaire designed for clinical and research settings.

• Instrument Type: Multidimensional, event-specific self-report rating scale.
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (ages 16 and older) who have experienced traumatic life events (e.g., military combat, interpersonal assault, domestic violence, traumatic accidents, complicated bereavement).
• Item Count: 32 items in the standardized clinical research version.
• Administration Time: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, clinician-administered interview, or secure computerized assessment.
• Designated Event Specification: Prior to completing the inventory, respondents explicitly identify and anchor their responses to a specific traumatic index event (e.g., “Identify the event you find most distressing or feel most guilty about”).
• Response Formats: The TRGI utilizes 5-point Likert scales calibrated specifically to the wording of each item:
• Cognitive and General Belief Items: 1 = not at all true, 2 = somewhat true, 3 = moderately true, 4 = very true, 5 = extremely true.
• Distress and Somatic Frequency Items: 1 = never true, 2 = rarely true, 3 = sometimes true, 4 = frequently true, 5 = always true.
• Guilt Frequency Item (Item 18): 1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = frequently, 5 = always.
• Guilt Intensity Item (Item 22): 1 = none, 2 = mild, 3 = moderate, 4 = severe, 5 = extreme.
• Overall Guilt Item (Item 25): 1 = Not guilty at all, 2 = slightly guilty, 3 = moderately guilty, 4 = very guilty, 5 = extremely guilty.
• Scoring Structure:
• Reverse Scoring: Positive justification items (e.g., Item 4: “What I did was completely justified”; Item 8: “What I did made sense”; Item 12: “If I knew today… I would do exactly the same thing”; Item 17: “I had good reasons for doing what I did”; and Item 32: “I didn’t do anything wrong”) are reverse-scored ($1=5, 2=4, 3=3, 4=2, 5=1$) prior to subscale computation.
• Subscale Computation: Scale scores are obtained by calculating the mean score (ranging from 1.00 to 5.00) or total sum score for each specific scale: Global Guilt, Distress, Guilt Cognitions, Hindsight-Bias/Responsibility, Wrongdoing, and Lack of Justification.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory was officially introduced to the scientific community in 1996 through the foundational publication by Edward S. Kubany and colleagues in the American Psychological Association journal Psychological Assessment.

• Copyright Status: The original publication is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association (APA) (Kubany et al., 1996). However, Dr. Edward S. Kubany committed the inventory to wide clinical and research dissemination, allowing the instrument to be used freely by qualified researchers and licensed mental health clinicians for non-commercial educational, clinical, and scientific investigations.
• Fee: There is no licensing fee or royalty required for non-commercial academic research or clinical practice. Commercial packaging, digital software integration, or inclusion in fee-for-service testing platforms requires formal licensing permissions from the copyright holders and the estate of Dr. Kubany.
• Accessibility: The scale items, scoring parameters, and clinical administration instructions are accessible in the primary literature and clinical treatment manuals (e.g., Kubany & Watson, 2002; Kubany, McCaig, & Laconsay, 2004).

12. References

The following peer-reviewed publications and clinical manuals document the development, validation, and therapeutic application of the TRGI:

• Kubany, E. S., Haynes, S. N., Abueg, F. R., Manke, F. P., Brennan, J. M., & Stahura, C. (1996). Development and validation of the Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory (TRGI). Psychological Assessment, 8(4), 428–444. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.8.4.428
• Kubany, E. S. (1997). Application of cognitive therapy for trauma-related guilt (CT-TRG) with a Vietnam veteran troubled by multiple sources of guilt. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 4(1), 213–244. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1077-7229(97)80018-1
• Kubany, E. S. (1998). Cognitive therapy for trauma-related guilt. In V. M. Follette, J. I. Ruzek, & F. R. Abueg (Eds.), Cognitive-behavioral therapies for trauma (pp. 124–161). Guilford Press.
• Kubany, E. S. (2000). Cross validation of the Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory. Poster presentation at the 16th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS), San Antonio, TX.
• Kubany, E. S., Abueg, F. R., Brennan, J. M., Owens, J. A., Kaplan, A., & Watson, S. B. (1995). Initial examination of a multidimensional model of trauma-related guilt: Applications to combat veterans and battered women. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 17(4), 353–376. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02229056
• Kubany, E. S., Abueg, F. R., Kilauano, W., Manke, F. P., & Kaplan, A. (1997). Development and validation of the Sources of Trauma-Related Guilt Survey—War Zone Version. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10(2), 235–258. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024846416629
• Kubany, E. S., Hill, E. E., & Owens, J. A. (2003). Cognitive trauma therapy for battered women with PTSD: Preliminary findings. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 16(1), 81–91. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022019629804
• Kubany, E. S., Hill, E. E., Owens, J. A., Iannce-Spencer, C., McCaig, M. A., Tremayne, K. J., & Williams, P. L. (2004). Cognitive trauma therapy for battered women with PTSD (CTT-BW). Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72(1), 3–18. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.72.1.3
• Kubany, E. S., & Manke, F. P. (1995). Cognitive therapy for trauma-related guilt (CT-TRG): Conceptual bases and treatment outlines. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 2(1), 27–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1077-7229(05)80004-5
• Kubany, E. S., McCaig, M. A., & Laconsay, J. R. (2004). Healing the trauma of domestic violence: A workbook for women. New Harbinger Publications.
• Kubany, E. S., & Watson, S. B. (2002). Cognitive trauma therapy for formerly battered women with PTSD (CTT-BW): Conceptual bases and treatment outlines. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 9(2), 111–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1077-7229(02)80004-9
• Kubany, E. S., & Watson, S. B. (2003). Guilt: Elaboration of a testable multidimensional model. The Psychological Record, 53(1), 51–90. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395438
• Lacerenza, C. N. (2012). An exploratory factor analysis of self-reported state and trait guilt (Honors Thesis, University of Central Florida). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, CFH0004163. http://etd.fcla.edu/CF/CFH0004163/Lacerenza_Christina_N_201205_BS.pdf
• Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer Publishing Company.
• Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion. Psychological Review, 92(4), 548–573. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.92.4.548

13. Items of the Scale