Development and Validation of Domestic Violence Scale for Intimate Partners

Objective: Development and validation of domestic violence scale for intimate partners in Urdu language. Study Design: Cross sectional survey research design and purposive sampling technique were used. Place and Duration of Study: District Head Quarter Teaching Hospitals, Sargodha and Gujrat Pakistan, from Feb 2020 to Dec2021. Methodology: The domestic violence scale was based on 7 factors included neglect, psychological violence, spiritual violence, verbal violence, economic violence, physical violence, and sexual violence. Initially, 305 statements were developed on the bases of inductive and deductive approaches. 202 out of 305 items were selected after expert evaluation. Further, the pilot study retained 131 items. Moreover, for final administration data was collected by using a self-reported questionnaire on 654 married males and females from District Sargodha and District Gujrat Pakistan (including 320 injured women victimized by domestic violence reported in DHQ hospital Sargodha and Gujrat). Results: Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) Bartlett's Test of Sphericity Pallant showed an acceptable value above 0.6 showing the sampling adequacy of the Domestic Violence Scale. The KMO value of the domestic violence scale was 0.955, and the CFI was 0.948 with a significant p<0.01 value. The results indicated appropriate model fit indices for a significant model fit. There was high reliability of the domestic violence scale (0.951) at a 0.01 level of significance. At the end of all analyses 25 reliable and valid items retain in the scale. Conclusion: Domestic violence scale is valid and reliable instrument to measure neglect, psychological violence, spiritual violence, verbal violence, economic violence, physical violence, and sexual violence.