Salas-Wright, Christopher P.; Schwartz, Seth J.; Mejía-Trujillo, Juliana; Garcia, Maria F.; Sahbaz, Sumeyra; Bates, Melissa; Andrade, Patricia; Perez-Gomez, Augusto; Maldonado-Molina, Mildred M. (2024). The Crisis Migration Experience Scale: Developing and Validating a Tool for Venezuelan Youth and Adults Residing in Colombia. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy., Advance online publication. 10.1037/tra0001708

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Objective: Although prior research has shown that an array of distinct experiences related to crisis migration are associated with mental health, there is a pressing need for a theory-driven, multidimensional measure to assess the broad spectrum of crisis migration experiences. As such, the present study focused on developing and validating the Crisis Migration Experience Scale (CMES) with a sample of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. Method: Participants were adolescent (ages 12–17; n = 430) and adult migrants from Venezuela (ages 18+; n = 569). Randomly splitting the adolescent and adult samples in half, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted with 26 original items. After identifying a satisfactory factor structure to generate a 16-item CMES (CMES-16), we examined the associations of the CMES-16 with mental health outcomes. Results: We provide evidence for reliability, factorial validity, and concurrent validity of scores generated by the CMES-16 in a sample of Venezuelan crisis migrants in Colombia. Whereas our a priori conceptualization included seven domains, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that four are especially salient: material hardship, desperation, danger, and unplanned departure. Conclusions: Crisis migration is an increasingly important construct frequently referenced in the literature on migrant health and by international humanitarian organizations. The number of crisis migrant groups worldwide is increasing, with Ukrainians and Afghans recently added to the list of such groups, along with Venezuelans, Syrians, South Sudanese, Iraqis, and Central Americans. Developing and validating the CMES-16 with Venezuelan crisis migrants opens up important avenues of research, including work that incorporates other crisis migrant populations.
Here we detail the development and validation of the 16-item Crisis Migration Experience Scale (CMES-16) with Venezuelan migrants living in Colombia. This novel scale promises to move the field forward in understanding the experiences of individuals exposed to varying levels and types of crisis migration experiences. Developing and validating the CMES-16 with Venezuelan migrant youth and adults opens up important avenues of research, including work that incorporates other migrant populations from other countries and regions experiencing catastrophic military, social, political, economic, and/or environmental events.

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