Children's Response to the Gulf War: Assessment via Ordinal and Nominal Quantification of Compositions

This study reports on 253 Israeli fifth and sixth grade children at risk from missile attacks during the Persian Gulf War of 1991. During the fifth week of the war the children were asked to write, in their classroom, a short composition about their personal experience since the beginning of the war. The major concern of the study was the feasibility of employing a school-based, easy-to-administer, assessment tool (i.e. a composition) as both research and clinically oriented assessment procedure. The most noted experiences reported were children's active behavior in the sealed room, the role the mass media played and the anxiety, respectively. The results tend to concur with major findings of other studies using conventional measures as well as potentially providing some unique information. Overall, the children's compositions may have considerable practical value for group-based assessment in community disaster situations.