Psychometric properties of the WHO Violence Against Women instrument in a female population-based sample in Sweden: a cross-sectional survey

Abstract

ObjectiveTo explore psychometric properties of the Violence Against Women instrument in a randomly selected national sample of women (N=573) aged 18–65 years and residing in Sweden.DesignCross-sectional survey study.SettingSweden.ParticipantsA postal survey was sent to 1006 women between January and March 2009, during which 624 women (62%) returned the questionnaire. 51 women who did not answer any of the violence items were excluded from the analyses, resulting in a final sample of 573 women.Primary and secondary outcome measuresSelf-reported exposure to psychological, physical and sexual intimate partner violence.ResultsCronbach's α coefficients were 0.79 (psychological scale), 0.80 (physical scale), 0.72 (sexual scale) and 0.88 (total scale). A predetermined three-component solution largely replicated the explored three component conceptual model of the Violence Against Women instrument. The instrument was able to discriminate between groups known from previous studies to differ in exposure to physical and/or sexual violence, that is, respondents with poor versus good self-rated health and witnessed versus not witnessed physical violence at home when growing up. Past-year prevalence of physical (8.1%; 95% CI 5.9 to 10.3) and sexual (3%; 1.6 to 4.4) violence was similar to that reported in other Nordic studies; however, earlier-in-life prevalence was lower in the current study (14.3%; 95% CI 11.4 to 17.2 and 9.2%; 95% CI 6.8 to 11.6, respectively). Reported exposure rates were higher than those obtained from a concurrently administered instrument (NorVold Abuse Questionnaire).ConclusionsThe Violence Against Women instrument demonstrated good construct validity and internal reliability in an adult female population in Sweden. However, further studies examining these and other psychometric properties need to be conducted in other countries.

Investigating the Reliability and Validity of an Intimate Partner Violence Screening Tool for Use in Physical Therapy Practice

“…Future research should focus on a pilot study for clinical application with feedback from both patients and clinicians regarding usefulness in the physical therapy setting for female patients. [13][14][15] …”

Toward an integrated approach in research on interpersonal violence : Conceptual and methodological challenges

“…This means that the subjective experience of intimate partner violence is different for men and women but that they perpetrate similar acts of physical violence (Straus, 2012). Likewise, when investigating the psychometric properties of the VAWI among men and women, Nybergh found that the conceptual map for VAWI was different between the sexes (Nybergh et al, 2012;Nybergh et al, 2013a;Nybergh et al, 2013b). It was not as easy to see clear boundaries between the concepts of sexual, physical and emotional violence for men as for women.…”

“…However, the differences were only significant for emotional violence, both among men (VAWI=30.6% and NorAQ =10.2%) and women (VAWI=17.1%, NorAQ =2.6%). The differences could largely be attributed to two items concerning milder forms of emotional violence on VAWI that did not have any corresponding item in NorAQ (Nybergh et al, 2012(Nybergh et al, , 2013b. The large discrepancy between prevalence rates serves to illustrate that prevalence rates are largely dependent on the definitions and measurements used.…”

“…The questions in NorAQ were in that study re-written to be partner-specific (Nybergh et al, 2012(Nybergh et al, , 2013b. The two instruments were filled out by 77 women and 50 men.…”

Investigating the Reliability and Validity of a Newly Developed Intimate Partner Violence Screening Tool for use in Physical Therapy Practice

“…To further Cronbach's alpha comparison, we used Nyberg's study that was conducted with randomly selected male participants [9]. This study used the Violence against Women Instrument (VAWI).…”