Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is the most common form of violence suffered by women and constitutes a serious public health problem of global proportions. Public attitudes towards IPVAW are key to understanding the social context in which this type of violence occurs. Victim-blaming attitudes are among those that reflect public tolerance and acceptability of IPVAW and are often used to explain or justify IPVAW. In this study we develop and validate a new instrument to assess victim-blaming attitudes in cases of IPVAW. A sample of 1,800 participants was recruited through social media and a second sample of 50 IPVAW offenders was used for validation purposes. Through a cross-validation approach and by fitting an item response theory model to the data, we found that the latent structure of the instrument was one-dimensional and particularly informative for medium and high levels of victim-blaming attitudes. Differential item functioning analysis showed that item parameters did not differ by gender. We found, in addition, that (a) our measure was strongly related to acceptability and perceived severity of IPVAW, and also to ambivalent sexism, (b) men presented higher levels of victim-blaming attitudes than women, and (c) IPVAW offenders showed higher levels of victimblaming attitudes than men from the general population. A five-item short version of the scale is also presented for use in studies with limited application time or space. Our findings confirm that this new scale is a reliable and valid measure to assess victim-blaming attitudes in cases of IPVAW. ,La violencia de género es la forma más común de violencia que sufren las mujeres y constituye un grave problema de salud pública de proporciones globales. Las actitudes públicas hacia la IPVAW son clave para entender el contexto social en el que se produce este tipo de violencia. Las actitudes que culpabilizan a las víctimas son aquéllas que reflejan la tolerancia pública y la aceptabilidad de la IPVAW y que con frecuencia se emplean para explicar o justificar ésta. En este estudio desarrollamos y validamos un nuevo instrumento para evaluar las actitudes de culpabilización de la víctima en casos de violencia de género. Se reclutó una muestra de 1,800 participantes a través de las redes sociales y se utilizó una segunda muestra de 50 hombres condenados por violencia de género con fines de validación. Mediante un enfoque de validación cruzada y ajustando un modelo de teoría de respuesta al ítem a los datos, encontramos que la estructura latente del instrumento era unidimensional y particularmente informativa para niveles medios y altos de culpabilización de las víctimas. El análisis del funcionamiento diferencial del ítem mostró que los parámetros del ítem no difirieron por género. Además, encontramos que (a) nuestra medida estaba fuertemente relacionada con la aceptabilidad y percepción de gravedad de la violencia de género, y también con el sexismo ambivalente, (b) los hombres presentaban niveles más altos de culpabilización de la víctima que las mujeres, y (c) los hombres condenados por violencia de género mostraron niveles más altos de culpabilización de la víctima que los hombres de la población general. También se presenta una versión corta de cinco ítems de la escala para su uso en estudios con tiempo de aplicación o espacio limitado. Nuestros resultados confirman que esta nueva escala es una medida fiable y válida para evaluar las actitudes de culpabilización de la víctima en casos de violencia de género.

Strategies to reduce intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) can be targeted at different levels. Batterer intervention programs (BIPs) are among the main treatment approaches for IPVAW offenders. The most common outcome used in the evaluation of BIP effectiveness is recidivism. Efforts to increase BIP effectiveness in reducing recidivism should focus on key predictive variables of this outcome. The aim of this study was to identify key predictors of official recidivism from a large set of variables drawn from a sample of IPVAW offenders court-mandated to a community-based BIP (N = 393), with a follow-up period of between 0 and 69 months. To this end, a survival analysis was conducted using four sets of variables: individual-level, relational- and contextual-level, violence-related, and intervention process-related variables. To include all variables in the analysis simultaneously, a Cox regression model was estimated with the adaptive least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (ALASSO). From a pool of eighty-nine variables, six were selected as key predictors of recidivism: dropout, risk of future violence against non-partners, family violence exposure, immigrant status, accumulation of stressful life events, and trait anger. The area under the receiving operator characteristic (ROC) curve was .808, indicating good prediction of the model. The key predictors of recidivism found in this study should be considered by professionals and researchers in the BIP field to improve their evaluation and intervention strategies. Practical implications for future research are also discussed. Las estrategias para reducir la violencia contra la mujer en las relaciones de pareja pueden dirigirse a diferentes objetivos. Los programas de intervención para agresores de pareja son uno de los principales acercamientos para su tratamiento. El resultado más utilizado para la evaluación de la efectividad de estos programas es la reincidencia. Los esfuerzos para incrementar la efectividad de los programas de intervención para agresores de pareja en reducir la reincidencia deberían centrarse en las variables predictoras clave de este resultado. El objetivo de este estudio fue identificar los predictores clave de la reincidencia oficial a partir de un amplio conjunto de variables obtenidas a partir de una muestra de hombres participando por mandato judicial en un programa de intervención para agresores de pareja (,N, = 393), con un periodo de seguimiento de entre 0 y 69 meses. Con este objetivo, se realizó un análisis de supervivencia utilizando cuatro conjuntos de variables: variables individuales, variables relacionales y contextuales, variables relativas a la violencia y variables relativas al proceso de intervención. Para incluir simultáneamente todas las variables en el análisis, se estimó un modelo de regresión de Cox utilizando ALASSO (,adaptive least absolute shrinkage and selection operator,). De un conjunto de ochenta y nueve variables, seis fueron seleccionadas como predictores clave: abandono del programa, riesgo de violencia futura contra otras personas, exposición a violencia familiar, estatus de inmigrante, acumulación de eventos vitales estresantes e ira rasgo. El área bajo la curva ROC (,receiving operator characteristic,) fue .808, indicando una buena predicción del modelo. Los predictores clave de la reincidencia identificados en este estudio deberían ser considerados por los profesionales e investigadores en el ámbito de la intervención con agresores de pareja para mejorar sus estrategias de evaluación e intervención. Asimismo, se discuten las implicaciones prácticas para futuras investigaciones.

Background: Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is a worldwide public health problem. One of the most frequent forms of this type of violence in western societies is psychological IPVAW. According to the European Union (EU) Fundamental Rights Association (FRA) the prevalence of psychological IPVAW in the EU is 43%. However, the measurement invariance of the measure addressing psychological IPVAW in this survey has not yet been assessed. Methods: The aim of this study is to ensure the cross-national comparability of this measure, by evaluating its measurement invariance across the 28 EU countries in a sample of 37,724 women, and to examine how the levels of this type of violence are distributed across the EU. Results: Our results showed that the psychological IPVAW measure presented adequate psychometric properties (reliability and validity) in all countries. A latent structure of one factor was supported and scalar invariance was established in all countries. The average levels of psychological IPVAW were higher in countries like Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden compared to the rest of the EU countries. In many of the other countries the levels of this type of violence overlapped. Conclusion: Our findings underlined the importance of using appropriate statistical methods to make valid cross-national comparisons in large population surveys.

Willingness to intervene when one becomes aware of a case of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) reflects the level of tolerance and acceptance of this type of violence in society. Increasing the likelihood of intervention to help victims of IPVAW is also a target for prevention strategies aiming to increase informal social control of IPVAW. In this study, we present the development and validation of the Willingness to Intervene in Cases of Intimate Partner Violence (WI-IPVAW) scale. We report data for both the long and short versions of the scale. We analyzed the latent structure, the reliability and validity of the WI-IPVAW across four samples (N = 1648). Factor analyses supported a bifactor model with a general non-specific factor expressing willingness to intervene in cases of IPVAW, and three specific factors reflecting different intervention preferences: a preference for setting the law enforcement process in motion (“calling the cops” factor), a preference for personal intervention (“personal involvement” factor), and a preference for non-intervention (“not my business” factor). Configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance across genders were supported. Two short versions of the scale, with nine and six items, respectively, were constructed on the base of quantitative and qualitative criteria. The long and short versions of the WI-IPVAW demonstrated both high reliability and construct validity, as they were strongly related to the acceptability of IPVAW, victim-blaming attitudes, perceived severity of IPVAW, and hostile sexism. These results confirm that both the long and short versions of the WI-IPVAW scale are psychometrically sound instruments to analyze willingness to intervene in cases of IPVAW in different settings and with different research needs (e.g., long versions for clinical and research settings, and short versions for large population surveys). The WI-IPVAW is also useful for assessing prevention policies and public education campaigns design to promote a more responsive social environment in cases of IPVAW, thus contributing to deter and reduce this major social and public health problem.

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a scale measuring acceptability of IPVAW (A-IPVAW).