You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 6, Issue 12
  • Development of a brief measure of intimate partner violence experiences: the Composite Abuse Scale (Revised)—Short Form (CASR-SF)

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Public health
Research
Development of a brief measure of intimate partner violence experiences: the Composite Abuse Scale (Revised)—Short Form (CASR-SF)
  1. Marilyn Ford-Gilboe1,
  2. C Nadine Wathen2,
  3. Colleen Varcoe3,
  4. Harriet L MacMillan4,
  5. Kelly Scott-Storey5,
  6. Tara Mantler1,
  7. Kelsey Hegarty6,
  8. Nancy Perrin7
  1. 1Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
  2. 2Faculty of Information & Media Studies, Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
  3. 3School of Nursing, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  4. 4Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, Offord Centre for Child Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
  5. 5Faculty of Nursing, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
  6. 6Department of General Practice, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  7. 7School of Nursing, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Marilyn Ford-Gilboe; mfordg{at}uwo.ca

Abstract

Objectives Approaches to measuring intimate partner violence (IPV) in populations often privilege physical violence, with poor assessment of other experiences. This has led to underestimating the scope and impact of IPV. The aim of this study was to develop a brief, reliable and valid self-report measure of IPV that adequately captures its complexity.

Design Mixed-methods instrument development and psychometric testing to evolve a brief version of the Composite Abuse Scale (CAS) using secondary data analysis and expert feedback.

Setting Data from 5 Canadian IPV studies; feedback from international IPV experts.

Participants 31 international IPV experts including academic researchers, service providers and policy actors rated CAS items via an online survey. Pooled data from 6278 adult Canadian women were used for scale development.

Primary/secondary outcome measures Scale reliability and validity; robustness of subscales assessing different IPV experiences.

Results A 15-item version of the CAS has been developed (Composite Abuse Scale (Revised)—Short Form, CASR-SF), including 12 items developed from the original CAS and 3 items suggested through expert consultation and the evolving literature. Items cover 3 abuse domains: physical, sexual and psychological, with questions asked to assess lifetime, recent and current exposure, and abuse frequency. Factor loadings for the final 3-factor solution ranged from 0.81 to 0.91 for the 6 psychological abuse items, 0.63 to 0.92 for the 4 physical abuse items, and 0.85 and 0.93 for the 2 sexual abuse items. Moderate correlations were observed between the CASR-SF and measures of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and coercive control. Internal consistency of the CASR-SF was 0.942. These reliability and validity estimates were comparable to those obtained for the original 30-item CAS.

Conclusions The CASR-SF is brief self-report measure of IPV experiences among women that has demonstrated initial reliability and validity and is suitable for use in population studies or other studies. Additional validation of the 15-item scale with diverse samples is required.

  • spouse abuse
  • measurement
  • psychomotric
  • questionnaire
  • intimate partner violence against women
  • intimate partner violence

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012824

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors The study was designed by MF-G, CNW, CV, HLM, KS-S and NP. MF-G provided oversight for the project as a whole. NP completed statistical analyses. All authors participated in data analysis, interpretation of results and decision-making for the scale, as well as the preparation and review of this manuscript.

    • Funding This work was supported by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) under contract number (4500338445). MF-G was supported by the Women's Health Research Chair in Rural Health. HLM was supported by the Chedoke Health Chair in Child Psychiatry. The five primary studies that provided data for this study were funded from varied sources. The Violence Against Women (VAW) Screening Trial was funded by a grant from the former Ontario Women's Health Council, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (HLM, NPI). The remaining studies were funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) under awards to test: the Intervention for Health Enhancement After Leaving (iHEAL) in two studies (MF-G, NPI; J Wuest, NPI); an adaptation of IHEAL for Indigenous women (CV, NPI); and the effectiveness of an online safety and health intervention for women experiencing IPV (iCAN Plan 4 Safety; MF-G, NPI).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval Non-Medical Ethics Review Board, University of Western Ontario.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional data are available.