Abstract
Very few scales exist that measure violence against women and allow for comparative studies between Mexico and the United States. In this article, we present the results of a validation exercise for just such a scale. The scale was designed using, as a basis, some of the items in the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) and the Index of Spouse Abuse (ISA), in an attempt to differentiate among three types of violence: physical, psychological, and sexual. One hundred and twenty women from diverse social groups in each country responded to a questionnaire in which they were asked to consider the severity of each item on a scale from 1 to 100. Factorial analysis confirms that women assign a different average weight to each type of violence. An analysis of variance test confirms that the different groups of women interviewed evaluated each type of violence in a consistent manner. Very reasonable alpha coefficients were obtained. The paper concludes by demonstrating with an example the use of the scale in prediction modeling.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 95-104 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Journal of Family Violence |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 2006 |
Keywords
- Abuse scale
- Comparative research
- Internal consistency
- Validity
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
- Psychology(all)
- Clinical Psychology