The Utrecht Grief Rumination Scale (UGRS)

Method
Sample and Procedure
In this study, 319 participants were recruited in total with 196 women and 123 men who have lost a first-degree family member in the last five years. The age of the participants has a mean of 41.69 and a standard deviation of 18.75. Furthermore, age ranges from 15 to 89 years where the majority are graduates from a college or university (44.5%). According to the data, the participants experienced the loss, on average, 34 months before taking part in this study (M= 33.67, SD= 31.38). The range of the time since the loss is from 1 to 276 months. Participants mostly lost their parents (father= 24.8%, mother= 23.5%) and the cause of death of the deceased includes natural death, suicide, and death by accident or murder.
The Utrecht Grief Rumination Scale (UGRS) was used to collect information about the participant's thoughts about the loss. The fifteen items of this questionnaire measure grief-related rumination where five different aspects of rumination were addressed with each subscale consisting of 3 items. The first subscale is about what the loss means to the bereaved person (e.g. “How frequently in the past month did you think how your life has been changed through his/her death.”), (α= .85). The second subscale measures one's own reaction to the loss (e.g. “How frequently in the past month did you try to analyze your feelings about this loss precisely.”), (α= .81). The third scale asked about the injustice which might be perceived by the bereaved person (e.g. “How frequently in the past month did you wonder why this had to happen to you and not someone else.”), (α= .83). The fourth subscale assesses thoughts about the causes that might have lead to the death (e.g. “How frequently in the past month did you analyze whether you could have prevented his/her death.”), (α= .87). The last subscale measures thoughts which are related to the reactions of others and their social support (e.g. “How frequently in the past month did you think about how you would like others to react to your loss.”), (α= 0.71). The participants revealed how often they had such thoughts by marking their answer on a 5-point scale from “Never” to “Very often”. Overall, the subscales have a high internal
The Depressive and Anxious Avoidance in Prolonged Grief Questionnaire aims to get information on anxious avoidance of cues that could remind the participant of the loss and on depressive avoidance of activities. In total, there are 9 statements that the participant could rate whether they agree with the statement on an 8-point scale from “Not at all true for me” to “Completely true for me”. Four out of those 9 statements are directed at the anxious avoidance of the reality of the loss (e.g. “I avoid to dwell on painful thoughts and memories connected to his/her death.”) whereas the other five items assess the depressive avoidance (e.g. “Since […] is dead I do much less of the things I used to enjoy.”) showing the unwillingness to engage in activities. For the DAAPGQ, the subscale for anxious avoidance (α= .81) and depressive avoidance (α= .87) have a high internal consistency.
Symptoms of Complicated Grief. The Inventory of Complicated Grief- Revised (ICG-R) by Prigerson and Jacobs in 2001. The 30 items of this questionnaire explore if complicated grief symptoms are present and how much they might infer with the participant's life (e.g. “I have trouble accepting the death.”). The participant was asked how often and how intense the specific responses described in the different statements occurred in the past month. The 5-point scale ranges from “Never” to “Always”. The internal consistency for the ICG-R is high with an alpha of