I am working with the Partners Conflict Tactics Scales and the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales.
Both sets of scales include several types of violent / maltreatment actions.
Each sub-scale has items asking for the frequency of actions/behaviors.
What is the best way of scoring a sub-scale (e.g. physical abuse) taking into account that each item has different severity levels in addition to the frequency Likert-type answer?
Additionally, is it possible to combine different forms of violence into a composite index? (An index for partners violence and another index for child maltreatment).
Thank you.
Check: The revised conflict tactics scales (CTS2) development and preliminary psychometric data
MA Straus, SL Hamby, S Boney-McCoy… - Journal of family …, 1996 - jfi.sagepub.com
To play devil's advocate a bit, also see the following, which include more recent questioning of the scale by one of the authors Orjan mentioned, as well as a piece I just published.
Grych, J., & Hamby, S. L. (2014). Advancing the Measurement of Violence: Challenges and Opportunities. Psychology of Violence, 4(4), 363-368.
Lehrner, A., & Allen, N. E. (2014). Construct Validity of the Conflict Tactics Scales: A Mixed-Method Investigation of Women's Intimate Partner Violence. Psychology of Violence, 4(4), 477-490.
Ackerman, J. M. (2015). Over-Reporting Intimate Partner Violence in Australian Survey Research. British Journal of Criminology. doi: 10.1093/bjc/azv066
Hi Andrés,
I will not answer your question directly but I hope these additional elements will be of help to you.
I would say that you have to be very careful in the interpretation of the scores. Many debates have taken place about these scales, particularly through the fight engaged between Murray A. Straus and Michael P. Johnson since the mid 1990s. May I refer you to an article I published: “Interroger les femmes et les hommes au sujet des violences conjugales en France et aux États-Unis : entre mesures statistiques et interprétations sociologiques », in Nouvelles questions féministes in 2013 (vol. 32, n° 1)? The main arguments of the debate are summed up in this text which may encourage you to be very prudent in interpreting the difference between conflict and interpersonal violence (IV). The symmetrical questioning (the respondent being questioned as an author and as a victim) that you can find in the CTS (and CTS2) raises very serious methodological issues, as the comparison with many other surveys on IV have been showing for the last fifteen years.
Here is an excerpt from a document I just uploaded that might be of interest as you identify how to assess for IPV. For a quick, high-level assessment of IPV use, the most common assessment is the Conflict Tactic Scale. Assess for three timeframes: current relationship, past-12 month current relationship before past 12-months, and prior relationship IPV exposure. Most studies do not make this distinction. They often simply ask about lifetime exposure. To future explore IPV use, asking for a frequency count by item for past 12-month use. Using a scale (1-often to 4-never) is problematic. For example, often does not always include past-12 month IPV use (my unpublished data).
If you have the time, consider using the timeline followback: Fals-Stewart, W., Birchler, G. R., & Kelley, M. L. (2003). The timeline followback spousal violence interview to assess physical aggression between intimate partners: Reliability and validity. Journal of Family Violence, 18(3), 131-142.
Following up on Catherine's observation, consider: To identify whether the victim is experiencing coercive control IPV or situational couple IPV. This has not been a significant area of research due to clinical-advocates and the Office of Violence Against Women’s opposition to two IPV etiologies. Even so, the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory appears to be a viable tool. It reported significantly different results between the two IPV victim subsets, women seeking clinical-advocacy services versus women from the community. Of interest, this assessment found no significant differences between women experiencing IPV and not seeking clinical-advocacy services and women reporting poor couple relationship functioning and no IPV. This finding suggests that this assessment could be used to distinguish between coercive control abuse and situational couple aggression. Tolman, R. M. (1999). The validation of the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory. Violence and victims, 14(1), 25-37.
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