Cultural adaptation to Spanish and psychometric analysis of the Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST) in Peruvian adult women

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Partner violence is a public health problem. In Peru, women with spouses are vulnerable to suffering it. The Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST) is a widely recommended instrument for the early identification of these cases. Therefore, our objective was to adapt and analyse the psychometric properties of the WAST scale in adult Peruvian women. METHODOLOGY: This was an instrumental study, with a sample of 628 women who were in a marital condition of cohabitation or married at the time of the study. The mean age was 35 years (M = 35.58; SD = 10.92) and on average they were living with their partner for 9 years (M = 9.93; SD = 8.41). This sample was selected by non-probabilistic snowball sampling. The Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) were used. The validity of the internal structure was verified with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), convergent validity by correlation coefficients between the WAST, GAD-7 and PHQ-9, while reliability was verified using Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s Omega coefficient. RESULTS: Factorial analysis indicated that the one-dimensional model showed adequate goodness-of-fit indices (CFI = 0.998; TLI=0.991; RMSEA=0.103; SRMR=0.075), and reliability coefficients (α = 0.899 and ω = 0.916) were optimal. Additionally, the WAST showed strong external validity based on the relationship with the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores (Rho > 0.50). CONCLUSIONS: The Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST) scale demonstrated solid evidence of internal and external validity and optimal reliability in adult Peruvian women. Its use will benefit the early identification of victims of intimate partner violence in primary health care and further research.