Community acceptance - The community acceptance measure consisted of six items assessing the way participants perceived general manifestations of acceptance from others in the community . The measure included items such as " since the war , people in this community have been good to you " and ' since the war , you feel you have been welcomed back into the community where you live . " As opposed to the daily discrimination scale discussed below , these items were not phrased to specifically refer to the experience of being a child soldier . Items were scored on a Likert scale with response options of " not true " to " sometimes true " or " very true . " This measure was administered at both waves of data collection and exhibited strong internal reliability ( Cronbach 's α = .90 at T1 and Cronbach 's α = .89 at T2 ) . For each child , we computed a subscale score for community acceptance at T1 and T2 . We also computed a " change in community acceptance " by subtracting the T1 score from the score at T2 . An increase in the community acceptance score between baseline and follow - up would thus indicate a positive change in community acceptance . Because change in community acceptance differed for those starting at higher or lower levels at baseline , all analyses were adjusted for T1 community acceptance . Baseline scores and scores for change in community acceptance were treated as continuous measures in analyses .