(PS7-81) The Reasons for Violence Scale in Dyads experiencing Intimate Partner Violence- Exploring Latent Factor Structure

Introduction: Alcohol-related physical intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pressing public health problem with many barriers to intervention and risk reduction. Having a better understanding of the perceived functions of physical IPV perpetration is critical to improving intervention options. One measure assessing high risk individuals’ “Reasons for Violence” perpetration has been introduced to the literature but its psychometric properties have not yet been thoroughly assessed to our knowledge. This study seeks to 1) understand the measurement properties and underlying latent factor structure of this scale and 2) examine its validity and measurement invariance properties.

Method: A sample of couples (N=100) reporting a history of physical IPV and at least one partner meeting diagnostic criteria for alcohol use disorder completed measures of reasons for violence, dyadic adjustment, alcohol use problem severity, and IPV perpetration. A randomly selected half of the sample will be used for an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to investigate the latent factor structure of the Reasons for Violence Scale. The second half of the sample will be used to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the factor structure supported by the initial EFA. Configural, metric, and scalar measurement invariance will be assessed across sex. Convergent and discriminant validity will also be examined. 

Discussion: We will investigate and replicate the latent factor structure of the Reasons for Violence Scale in a sample of dyads at high risk for perpetrating physical IPV. This work will facilitate opportunities for future work to meaningfully compare latent factor scores and their associations with future perpetration risk and violence severity outcomes. In addition, dyadic latent profile analyses could gleam important underlying presentations of IPV in dyads that may warrant different types of intervention. For instance, a dyad with one partner endorsing primary reasons around substance use and another partner endorsing reasons of self-defense may warrant different primary interventions than a dyad with both partners endorsing difficulties in emotion regulation as primary reasons for violence.  Of course, future work should replicate the CFA factor structure in a new sample of high-risk couples to bolster confidence in the generalizability of these findings.