Psychometric properties of the Vulnerability to Abuse Screening Scale for screening abuse of older adults

Abstract

OBJECTIVE Adapt and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Vulnerability to Abuse Screening Scale to identify risk of domestic violence against older adults in Brazil.METHODS The instrument was adapted and validated in a sample of 151 older adults from a geriatric reference center in the municipality of Belo Horizonte, State of Minas Gerais, in 2014. We collected sociodemographic, clinical, and abuse-related information, and verified reliability by reproducibility in a sample of 55 older people, who underwent re-testing of the instrument seven days after the first application. Descriptive and comparative analyses were performed for all variables, with a significance level of 5%. The construct validity was analyzed by the principal components method with a tetrachoric correlation matrix, the reliability of the scale by the weighted Kappa (Kp) statistic, and the internal consistency by the Kuder-Richardson estimator formula 20 (KR-20).RESULTS The average age of the participants was 72.1 years (DP = 6.96; 95%CI 70.94–73.17), with a maximum of 92 years, and they were predominantly female (76.2%; 95%CI 69.82–83.03). When analyzing the relationship between the scores of the Vulnerability to Abuse Screening Scale, categorized by presence (score > 3) or absence (score < 3) of vulnerability to abuse, with clinical and health conditions, we found statistically significant differences for self-perception of health (p = 0.002), depressive symptoms (p = 0.000), and presence of rheumatism (p = 0.003). There were no statistically significant differences between sexes. The Vulnerability to Abuse Screening Scale acceptably evaluated validity in the transcultural adaptation process, demonstrating dimensionality coherent with the original proposal (four factors). In the internal consistency analysis, the instrument presented good results (KR-20 = 0.69) and the reliability via reproducibility was considered excellent for the global scale (Kp = 0.92).CONCLUSIONS The Vulnerability to Abuse Screening Scale proved to be a valid instrument with good psychometric capacity for screening domestic abuse against older adults in Brazil.

Risco de violência e apoio social em idosos: estudo transversal

“…(1)(2)(3) As alterações biológicas, decorrentes do processo de senescência, podem se relacionar com as singularidades sociais de cada pessoa, que são peculiaridades advindas de efeitos cumulativos, como condições deficitárias em educação, moradia, renda, lazer, trabalho, suporte social e de saúde. (4) O envelhecimento ainda é alvo de estereótipos e preconceitos, sendo influenciado pela cultura e pelas condições de vida e estando frequentemente associado apenas a uma fase de aumento das fragilidades. Também o aparecimento de incapacidades para o idoso realizar o autocuidado no ambiente familiar pode resultar no surgimento de episódios de violência, tornando esse fenômeno corriqueiro no relacionamento com o familiar agressor.…”

Violence against the elderly: correlation with social support, depressive symptoms and sociodemographic characterization of an elderly population of the Brazilian Northeast

“…4 These findings demonstrate that the phenomenon of violence is correlated with the presence of depressive symptoms, approaching with results obtained in other studies, which verified that the symptoms of depression were associated with a higher risk of violence among the elderly, especially for the elderly women . 10,11 Furthermore, social support did not show a statistically significant correlation with violence. This result is not based on data found in the literature, which showed a negative correlation between perceived social support and the risk of violence.…”

Factors associated with the risk of violence against older adult women: a cross-sectional study

“…Older women are more likely to be victims of violence, which is predominantly perpetrated in the home and family environment (7) . Such evidence has frequently been observed in different studies and contexts (4,(8)(9), which leads us to consider that women are more exposed to experiencing situations of violence and, thus, that gender is a risk factor for the phenomenon. This condition of vulnerability is explained by gender inequalities, whereby women are subjugated and oppressed at all ages, and this increases in later life, when power relations involving other aggressive elements than gender can be found.…”