Sociology and Criminology-Open Access
Open Access

Abstract

Validation of a Short Version of a Self-rated Instrument Designed to Measure Attitudes towards Domestic Violence

Adriana Banozic

Violence against women has been recognized as an important public health problem. It is present in every culture around the globe but its local manifestations are highly dependent on social and cultural norms of the society which permeates it. Therefore, to provide a more robust assessment of the effectiveness of a domestic violence prevention programmes promoted by Singapore Committee for UN Women, Singapore, semantic and psychometric validation of Attitudes towards domestic violence (ADV) scale was conducted. As the questionnaire was tested in Singapore with English as an official language, translation and back translation steps were omitted. In the subsequent steps 20 multidisciplinary team members provided their feedback on semantic structure of the items to produce the final version. Singaporean version of ADV had an acceptable validity (Cronbach’s coefficient alphas .81 to .98) of scores on the five subscales and satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s coefficient alphas .70 to .85). The ADV Questionnaire proved to be a promising instrument for estimating the effectiveness of domestic abuse prevention programmes.