Development and validation of the Domestic Violence Questionnaire in married women aged 18-55 years.

BACKGROUND

Intimate partner violence against women is seen in all cultures. It has wide-ranging effects on the physical and psychological health of women. In the local language, available questionnaires are either too exhaustive or inadequate to assess domestic violence comprehensively.

OBJECTIVE

To develop a Domestic Violence Questionnaire in Malayalam and validate it for married women aged 18-55 years in the local population.

STUDY DESIGN

Descriptive study - Validation of questionnaire.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A 29-item questionnaire, to identify domestic violence over the past 1 year, was developed in the local language, by selecting items from two other questionnaires and based on expert opinion. Item reduction was done after pilot testing. Then, this 25-item questionnaire was administered to 276 married women aged 18-55 years. Reliability and validity were estimated. Factor analysis was done for item reduction. Poor-loading, wrong-loading and cross-loading items were removed from the questionnaire. Taking the subjective perception of the participants regarding themselves experiencing domestic violence as the gold standard, a Receiver Operator Characteristic curve was drawn to decide the cut-off score with optimum sensitivity and specificity.

RESULTS

The final questionnaire had 20 items - 13 items for psychological and 7 items for physical violence. Internal consistency reliability was 0.92. At a cut-off score of 5, sensitivity was 89.5% and specificity 87.2%.

CONCLUSIONS

The Domestic Violence Questionnaire in Malayalam has adequate psychometric properties to identify intimate partner violence against women in the local population.