Psychometric Validation of the Domestic Violence Questionnaire in Swahili Among Congolese Female Survivors of Domestic Violence

Abstract

The Domestic Violence Questionnaire (DVQ) is a measure that captures physical, sexual, economic, and psychological violence perpetrated against women. A team of local academicians and intervention experts evaluated several tools for domestic and gender-based violence, concluding that the DVQ fitted best in the context of evaluating the Living Peace intervention in conflict-affected eastern DRC. The purpose of this validation study was to: (1) validate the factor structure of the Swahili version of the DVQ, (2) to evaluate its convergent and divergent validity, and (3) to examine its internal consistency reliability. The factor structure was evaluated using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) while concurrent validity and internal consistency reliability were evaluated using Pearson correlation and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, respectively. The study participants were women, partners of men that participated in the Living Peace program, a community-based intervention program that works on promoting positive masculinity among men that are perceived to be violent by their community. Data were obtained from two independent purposive samples of 704 participants for EFA and 878 participants for CFA, selected from 60 villages in North and South Kivu, DRC. The results indicated that five and three-factor structures could be meaningfully interpreted in EFA, each with 66% explained variance. For comparative purposes, CFA was conducted on the two newly created factor models and the original factor model. All models reach good fit indexes, with the three-factor model demonstrating the best fit. Its standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.57 to 0.91. The internal consistency was α = .90 for the total scale and ranged from α = .75 to .926 per dimension. Finally, scores of DVQ were negatively correlated with mental well-being ( r = −0.23, p < .001), and positively with depression ( r = .435, p < .001), as hypothesized. The Swahili version of DVQ has excellent psychometric properties and can be applied to evaluate the physical, sexual, economic and psychological violence in victims of domestic violence in humanitarian crisis settings.