Abstract
BackgroundKnowledge of the relationship between men’s health and violence is flawed by narrow and faulty conceptualization and measurement of violence that often results in attribution of health problems to one form or type of violence without consideration of other exposures. Our purpose is to describe the development and initial testing of the Cumulative Lifetime Violence Severity scale designed for use in health research to measure men’s perceptions of the severity of their cumulative lifetime violence.MethodsWe framed the dimensions of violence severity as: type (physical, psychological, sexual), timing (childhood, adulthood), focus (perpetrator, target), context, frequency, and degree of distress. Items reflecting these dimensions were vetted by local experts including individuals who identified as men, with particular attention to meaningful language for men. The measure was pretested, revised to 64 items, and tested for test-retest reliability prior to use in a study of 685 English-speaking Eastern Canadian men, ages 19 to 65 years. We used Principal Components Analysis to illuminate the underlying dimensionality of the items.ResultsPrincipal Components Analysis yielded a 44-item 11 component solution that accounted for 64.06% of variance with good model fit and a Cronbach’s alpha of .92. All dimensions of our conceptualization of violence severity were reflected in the components, except Adult Target Sexual Violence. Convergent validity between the Cumulative Lifetime Violence Severity-44 Scale and a global lifetime violence rating scale was r = .750 (p < .001) and concurrent validity was moderate and significant between the Cumulative Lifetime Violence Severity-44 scale and measures of mental health problems commonly experienced by people with violence histories.ConclusionsThe Cumulative Lifetime Violence Severity-44 scale shows promise as the first comprehensive measure of cumulative lifetime violence for health research that considers gender, individual distress and experiences as both perpetrator and target. Next steps include further exploratory analysis with a more diverse sample of men and confirmatory factor analysis.
Highlights
Knowledge of the relationship between men’s health and violence is flawed by narrow and faulty conceptualization and measurement of violence that often results in attribution of health problems to one form or type of violence without consideration of other exposures
Cumulative lifetime violence severity scale: development and initial testing among men Despite accumulating evidence that violence is adversely related to health, knowledge of this complex relationship is flawed by narrow conceptualization and measurement of violence in health research [1]
There is urgent need to consider how health is affected by the accumulation of co-occurring and interconnecting multiple experiences of violence across the lifespan as perpetrator and target [2,3,4]
Summary
Knowledge of the relationship between men’s health and violence is flawed by narrow and faulty conceptualization and measurement of violence that often results in attribution of health problems to one form or type of violence without consideration of other exposures. Conceptual underpinnings of cumulative lifetime violence severity Men’s exposure to interpersonal violence within families, social networks, workplaces, and public spaces, both as perpetrators and targets, is pervasive throughout their lifetimes and has been shown to have negative effects on their health and well-being [7]. The full burden of violence can be understood only by considering the co-occurrence and interconnections among multiple, diverse, gendered experiences of violence including polyvictimization, polyperpetration, and perpetration-victimization [2]. Another limitation to current measurement of men’s violence exposure is emphasis on experiences as target and neglect of experiences as perpetrator
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