Psychometric Properties of an Intimate Partner Violence Tool for Health Care Students

Abstract

Health care professionals have acknowledged intimate partner violence (IPV) as a highly prevalent public health problem necessitating the creation of standardized education programs, survey tools, and well-defined outcome measures. Testing and evaluation of these measures, however, has been limited to specific populations of health care professionals. In 2007 and 2008, psychometric properties of the Physician Readiness to Manage Intimate Partner Violence Survey (PREMIS) were adapted, tested, and evaluated on a group of medicine, nursing, social work, and dentistry students during their last semester of college. The adapted instrument demonstrated high reliability within some IPV constructs, and six of the eight scales described in the original PREMIS were identified. Three scales presented a Cronbach’s α ≥ .70, demonstrating acceptable reliability, and a new scale, IPV Screening, was also identified that showed good reliability (α = .74). The adapted instrument showed good stability of psychometric properties in the student population and generally good correlation within several measures.