Development and Initial Validation of a Measure to Assess Beliefs about Cyber Intimate Partner Violence

Introduction: Cyber IPV is the use of communication technologies to harm a current or past intimate partner and can include publicly sharing private information, impersonation, monitoring one’s partner, and direct verbal aggression. Limited research has identified malleable predictors of cyber IPV that can be targeted in prevention programs, such as attitudes about cyber IPV. However, there are no measures that assess attitudes about cyber IPV. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a measure that assesses attitudes about cyber IPV. It was hypothesized that a two-factor structure would result (Direct Cyber Aggression and Cyber Control and Monitoring). It was also hypothesized that the measure would have strong construct validity (see Results).

Method: Items were generated from a thorough review of the literature and from three focus groups. Experts provided feedback that was used to refine items. The measure is currently being tested for construct validity in a sample of young adult college students (ages 18-25; target N = 350). Each participant will complete an online survey assessing in-person IPV perpetration and victimization, cyber IPV perpetration and victimization, attitudes towards IPV, and attitudes toward cyber IPV.

Results: To establish the factor structure of the attitudes toward cyber IPV scale, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analyses will be conducted. Once the best fitting model is identified, path analyses will be conducted to determine the validity (e.g., construct, convergent, discriminant) of the measure. It is expected that attitudes about cyber IPV will be concurrently related to attitudes about in-person IPV. It is expected that attitudes about cyber IPV will be concurrently related to actual cyber IPV perpetration, and that this relation would be stronger than the relation between cyber IPV attitudes and in-person IPV perpetration.

Conclusion: As it stands, there are currently no published scales that assess attitudes toward cyber violence in relationships. It is important to note that existing IPV attitudes scales are not sufficient for understanding cyber IPV. That is, cyber IPV is functionally and theoretically distinct from in-person IPV. By developing and evaluating the Cyber Intimate Partner Attitudes (CIPA) Scale, this study fills an important gap in the literature. The development of a cyber IPV attitudes scale is necessary for predicting and preventing cyber IPV, which has become a growing concern for young adults.