Development and validation of the Psychological Abuse Experienced in Groups Scale

Abstract

The aim of this study is the development and analysis of the psychometric properties of a new instrument to assess the possible psychological abuse experienced in a group setting. The Psychological Abuse Experienced in Groups Scale was administered to 138 people who self-identified as former members of abusive groups. An exploratory factor analysis revealed a common factor, which showed appropriate reliability. The scale scores were correlated with a prior measure aimed to assess group abusiveness, providing evidence of external validity. Participants reported a higher degree of psychological distress than normative samples, and those who requested psychological counseling after leaving the group had suffered group psychological abuse to a greater extent. The scale covers a wide range of subtle and explicit abusive behaviors and overcomes the limitations of previous instruments, being useful in both research and applied settings.

Sociodemographic Variables Most Associated with Suicidal Behaviour and Suicide Methods in Europe and America. A Systematic Review

“…For the aforesaid, it would be advisable to expand the search with variables which, even if not closely associated with SB for future research, at least should provide important information as, for instance, sexual orientation, since different studies show that groups of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transsexuals have a higher risk of SB (Eisenberg & Resnick, 2006;Haas et al, 2010;Harris, 2013;Liu & Mustanski, 2012;Power et al, 2016). In view of all this, intervention and/or prevention plans (with instruments that detect, for example, psychological abuse; see Saldaña, Rodríguez-Carballeira, Almendros, & Escartín, 2017) can be set up and targeted at groups that are more frequently associated with SBs. Other aspect to be mentioned is that in the flow chart a number of duplicate studies can be found in lower amount than studies excluded because they did not meet the inclusion criteria.…”

Psychological Abuse Experienced in Groups Scale: Psychometric Properties of the Japanese Version

“…The development of measures of group psychological abuse has been the aim of several studies (Bohm & Alison, ; Chambers, Langone, Dole, & Grice, ; Saldaña, Rodríguez‐Carballeira, Almendros, & Escartín, ; Winocur, Whitney, Sorensen, Vaughn, & Foy, ; Wolfson, ). However, there is still a need for standardized instruments adapted and validated across different cultures (Almendros, Gámez‐Guadix, Carrobles, & Rodríguez‐Carballeira, ), especially to allow cross‐cultural comparisons of individual experiences of group psychological abuse.…”

“…Despite the strengths of the GPA, the lack of a comprehensive semantic definition of group psychological abuse that clearly differentiates its operative components may have led to certain limitations related to its content (Saldaña et al, ). First, there is an underrepresentation of some abusive strategies that experts consider severe, such as control over information, which was not represented in any item on the scale.…”

“…Recently, the Psychological Abuse Experienced in Groups Scale (PAEGS; Saldaña et al, ) was proposed in order to overcome the limitations in the assessment of the phenomenon. This measure is composed of 31 items based on the taxonomy of group psychological abuse strategies developed by Rodríguez‐Carballeira et al ().…”

Evaluación del abuso psicológico en parejas del mismo sexo: evidencias de validez de la EAPA-P en una muestra de habla hispana

“…These results contrast with those obtained in the original study, where the EAPA-P was administered to a sample of 101 women victims of gender violence (Porrúa-García et al, 2016), and evidence was found for a two-factor structure that differentiated between direct and indirect PA strategies. Although some studies argue that PA is multidimensional (i.e., Murphy & Hoover, 1999), in other studies that have evaluated the abuse applied in the context of an intimate relationship (i.e., Jones, Davidson, Bogat, Levendosky, & VonEye, 2005) and in abusive groups (i.e., Saldaña, Rodríguez-Carballeira, Almendros, & Escartín, 2017), evidence has been found for the unidimensionality of the construct. In this regard, the PA strategies included in the taxonomy proposed by Rodríguez-Carballeira et al (2014), and represented in the items on the EAPA-P, could be components of the same phenomenon that tend to occur simultaneously in abusive relationships.…”