Measuring Psychological Violence: The Adaptation of the Profile of Psychological Abuse and the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory into Turkish

Abstract

Psychological violence is a type of violence that includes verbal and emotional abuse such as humiliation, contempt, verbal violence, shouting, threatening, jealousy, social isolation, emotional and / or physical distancing. The purpose of the present research was to investigate reliability and validity of the Turkish version of Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory (PMWI; Tolman 1989) and Profile of Psychological Abuse (PPA; Sackett & Saunders 1999). In this regard, two studies were conducted. Two hundred and ninety-three women participated in Study I through a websurvey and 23 women living in a women’s shelter participated in Study II. The findings of the study after adaptation into Turkish, PMWI consists of three factors including dominance, isolation, and emotional/verbal violence and PPA consists of four factors including jealous control, ignore, ridicule traits, and criticize behavior. In Study 1, significant evidence was obtained by examining the relationship between PMWI and PPA’s total scores and the factors themselves and with each other. It was also found that PMWI and PPA and their factors have significant relationships with anxiety, depression, negative self, somatization and hostility. In Study 2, the shelter sample produced evidence of discriminant validity in both scales. Internal consistency values ranged between .81 and .96 in Study 1 and .83 to .96 in Study II. Overall, the present study provided strong evidence that the Turkish versions of PMWI and PPA were valid and reliable measures of psychological violence against women.