Development of a Retrospective Measure of Child Abuse for Heterosexual and LGBTQ Mexican Adults

Abstract

AbstractChild abuse is a phenomenon that affects a large proportion of the world’s population and has important effects on their mental health. Although several instruments exist to measure it, they present some difficulties that require improvement. The present study started from an instrument previously developed for Mexican population (Esparza-Del Villar et al., Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2020) to construct a new retrospective measure of abuse: the Child Abuse Scale for Adults (EAIA, Spanish initials). We worked with a total sample of 810 individuals, consisting mainly of women (> 70%) and young adults (mean age around 23 years). We conducted both traditional (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis) and advanced (exploratory graph analysis, item response theory) procedures to obtain a short self-report measure of child abuse experiences. The EAIA evidenced a clear factor structure (CFI = .96, RSMEA = .06), as well as adequate reliability for its three subscales: sexual (ω = .91), physical (ω = .88) and emotional abuse (ω = .93). In addition, it showed partial scalar invariance between sexes. At the item level, it was observed that the items of the sexual and physical abuse subscales had greater informative capacity at high levels of maltreatment, while the items of the emotional abuse subscale showed better psychometric quality at average levels of the construct. Finally, associations were found in the expected direction between the three subscales of the EAIA and a set of psychopathological variables (depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation). In conclusion, the EAIA constitutes a promising alternative to retrospectively measure child abuse in the Mexican adult population.