Instrument development of the self‐efficacy scale for abused women

Abstract

The development of a scale to measure an abused woman's self-efficacy is described. The Self-Efficacy Scale for Abused Women (SESAW) originally was a 27-item 100-mm visual analog scale. It underwent face and content validity testing and was administered to a community sample of abused women (N = 50). The SESAW was tested for internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity. Cronbach's alphas were.95 and.96 at times 1 and 2, respectively. The bivariate correlation between the SESAW at times 1 and 2 was r =.85, p <.01. Construct validity was established by a moderate bivariate correlation with the criterion as measured by the Self-Efficacy Scale-general/global subscale (r =.64, p <.01 at time 1, and r =.78, p <.01 at time 2). The SESAW was streamlined to 19 items. The SESAW is an acceptable measure of situation-specific self-efficacy in community-based abused women.

Efficacy of a computerized abuse and safety assessment intervention for women with disabilities: A randomized controlled trial.

“…It is striking that women who had experienced the most abuse in the past year had lower safety self-efficacy scores on average and yet engaged in more safety behaviors on average than women who had little or no abuse in the past year. This suggests that women who experienced recent abuse may have lost confidence that their actions would reduce the violence, but they still demonstrated remarkable resilience in their continued efforts to protect themselves (May & Limandri, 2004).…”

“…For some women experiencing IPV, however, the feedback loop may not be positive. For example, if a woman takes steps to stay safer, such as reaching out to a trusted person or hiding valuable papers, but the perpetrator continues the violence, the woman's self-efficacy to keep herself safe may diminish, despite her attempts to protect herself because of a lack of control over the perpetrator's actions (May & Limandri, 2004).…”

Promoting safety awareness and protection skills for people with disabilities: a literature review

“…For instance, sexual assault victims are at high risk of re-victimisation as post-traumatic stress symptoms may interfere with their ability to identify risk or confidence to use assertive/protective strategies (Littleton and Decker, 2017;Littleton and Ullman, 2013). Decreased and/or negative social interactions can reduce abused victims' sense of control and self-efficacy to adopt safety behaviours (May and Limandri, 2004). These effects may be exaggerated for PwDs with significantly lower self-esteem than those without disabilities (Duvdevany, 2010;Nosek et al, 2003).…”

Validity of the visual analogue scale as an instrument to measure self-efficacy in resuscitation skills

“…The VAS has been used to measure self‐efficacy before, but usually in combination with a lengthy questionnaire 13,14 . It was our aim to assess the validity of a VAS linked to a single question per task as a simple estimate of self‐efficacy.…”