Abstract

TOMAZ PAIVA, TAMYRES; GOMES CAVALCANTI, JAQUELINE  and  DA SILVA LIMA, KALINE. Psychometric Properties of a Measurement of Psychological Abuse in Couples. Rev. colomb. psicol. [online]. 2020, vol.29, n.1, pp.45-59. ISSN 0121-5469.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcp.v29n1.72599.

Psychological abuse is characterized by the degradation and control of the partner, which leads to mutual disrespect. The purpose of the study was to collect evidence regarding the validity of the Scale of Psychological Abuse in Couples (EAP-P, in Spanish) in Brazilian women. The study was divided into two parts. A sample of 303 women participated in Study 1, and exploratory factor and internal consistency analyses were carried out on that sample. Findings corroborate a bifactor structure: direct strategies of psychological abuse and indirect strategies of psychological abuse, with alphas equal to .92 and .89, respectively. A sample of 380 women participated in Study 2, a confirmatory analysis was carried out, and the parameters of the items were validated using Item Response Theory (IRT). The results show that the bifactor model featured better adjustment indexes, in addition to good composite reliability indexes of .90 and average variance extracted (.51 and .50). Through IRT, they also showed a high capacity to assess the central portion of the psychological abuse continuum. EAP-P proved to be a valid and consistent instrument to detect and measure psychological violence in women.

Keywords : IRT; psychological abuse; scale; validation; women.

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