Evidence of Internal Structure Validity, Measurement Invariance, Convergent Validity, Clinical Validity, and Reliability of the Woman Abuse Screening Tool in Peruvian Women

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is the most common type of violence committed against women and results in serious personal, familial, social, and economic consequences; thus, there is a need to detect IPV early. One test for detecting IPV is the Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST). The objective of the study was to obtain evidence of the validity of the WAST in terms of its internal structure, measurement invariance, convergent validity, clinical validity, and reliability. A total of 670 women who have or have had a heterosexual relationship participated in the study. The first stage included 513 adult women who partook of health services (M_age = 35.5 years, SD_age = 10 years). The second stage included 160 women, 80 diagnosed with IPV (M_age = 34.2 years, SD_age = 11.8 years) and 80 who were not (M_age = 31.8 years, SD_age = 11.5 years). We used multivariate and receiver operating characteristic curve analyses. We found evidence that the WAST demonstrates a one-dimensional structure; evidence of measurement invariance regarding cohabitation with the partner, length of the relationship, and age; evidence of convergent validity in terms of correlations with emotional dependence, self-compassion, expressive suppression, anxiety, and depression; and evidence of clinical validity in terms of the high probability of detecting positive cases of IPV. These properties support the use of the WAST for detecting possible cases of IPV, which will allow timely intervention. This instrument can also be used in larger studies on IPV in the Spanish-speaking population.