The FORAS project

The course, i.e., trajectory, of post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) differs widely, with most trauma-exposed individuals being either resilient or quickly recovering from initial symptoms, while for a subgroup of individuals PTSS are severe and may persist for years. The FORAS project aims to update and expand upon a previous systematic literature review on PTSS trajectories following traumatic events. Initially, we discovered 34 studies that charted varying PTSS courses, leading to developing a quality checklist and Bayesian Latent growth mixture model. The current review will extend this work by examining literature published between 2016 and 2023.

We will replicate and extend the original search to additional databases, integrating advanced machine-learning techniques with the OpenAlex database. This approach aims to capture studies potentially missed by traditional search methods. In total, we will assess seven different search strategies and compare their effectiveness in identifying relevant papers. We seek to understand whether advanced methods yield the same relevant papers more efficiently or uncover additional meaningful studies.

As the project goes, we will update the website with new data, scripts and output!