VALIDATION OF A PRELIMINARY VERSION OF THE CHILD-ABUSE POTENTIAL INVENTORY TO BE USED IN ARGENTINA

Objective: To know the ability of the CAP Inventory (Milner, 1986) to discriminate between child physical abusers and nonabusers in Argentin a, and to know its reliability. To conduct an item analysis in order t o know the capability of the Abuse Scale items for discrimination betw een both groups of subjects. Method: The CAP Inventory was applied to two groups of subjects: 40 child physical abusers and 40 nonabusers. B oth groups were matched in gender, age, educational level, family inco me, marital status, number of children, and gender and age of children . Results: Fifty-four items discriminated (p < .05) between both group s of subjects. The reliability coefficient of the Abuse Scale was adeq uate (alpha = .94). Twenty items with the best capability for discrimi nation were selected. More than 97% (97.4%) of subjects were correctly classified (94.4% for physical abusers and 100% for nonabusers). The Abuse Scale present similar psychometric characteristics than the Amer ican and Spanish versions. Conclusion: This is the first study in Arge ntina with the objective of CAP adaptation and validation, The discrim inant and predictive capability of the Abuse Scale are promising for A rgentina. However, complementary studies with different samples are ne eded in order to obtain reliable data and a preliminary version of the Inventory.