Spousal Violence: A Mokken Scaling Analysis of Attitudes of South Asian Men and Women

Abstract

Attitudes toward intimate partner violence (IPV) are usually explored by asking participants to respond to some statements describing various instances or situations. Currently, we do not know if responses to such questions or statements are random, leading to a total score which is hard to compare between respondents, or in a hierarchical manner which makes such comparison much more meaningful. The study was conducted to explore the structure of an “attitudes to intimate partner” violence scale used in the Demographic and Health Surveys Program (DHS), for a hierarchy of items according to the criteria of Mokken scaling. Secondary analyses of the data related to attitudes to IPV of South Asian men and women, collected by the DHS from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Nepal between 2006 and 2014. A strong Mokken scale was apparent in the data with IPV by men being most justified in cases where the wife neglected the children and least endorsed in the case of refusing to have sex. Men and women endorsed the items in the same order, but some inter country differences were apparent.