Psychological intimate partner violence against women in the European Union: a cross-national invariance study

• Main Authors: Manuel Martín-Fernández, Enrique Gracia, Marisol Lila
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2019-12-01
• Series: BMC Public Health
• Subjects: Intimate partner violence; Psychological violence; Emotional abuse; Controlling behavior; Measurement invariance; Cross-national research
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7998-0

Abstract Background Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is a worldwide public health problem. One of the most frequent forms of this type of violence in western societies is psychological IPVAW. According to the European Union (EU) Fundamental Rights Association (FRA) the prevalence of psychological IPVAW in the EU is 43%. However, the measurement invariance of the measure addressing psychological IPVAW in this survey has not yet been assessed. Methods The aim of this study is to ensure the cross-national comparability of this measure, by evaluating its measurement invariance across the 28 EU countries in a sample of 37,724 women, and to examine how the levels of this type of violence are distributed across the EU. Results Our results showed that the psychological IPVAW measure presented adequate psychometric properties (reliability and validity) in all countries. A latent structure of one factor was supported and scalar invariance was established in all countries. The average levels of psychological IPVAW were higher in countries like Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden compared to the rest of the EU countries. In many of the other countries the levels of this type of violence overlapped. Conclusion Our findings underlined the importance of using appropriate statistical methods to make valid cross-national comparisons in large population surveys.