VALIDATION OF THE INDICATORS OF ABUSE (IOA) SCREEN

It is important to enable social service agency practitioners to ident ify cases in which seniors are abused by their caregivers. The Indicat ors of Abuse (IOA) screening measure provides an abuse screening tool, based on abuse indicators, for use by practitioners, The study (N = 3 41) supports the validity of the 29-item set of indicators of the IOA, which discriminates abuse cases (84.4% of the time) from nonabuse cas es (99.2% of the time). An abuse-indicator model evolving from the IOA suggests three main types of abuse signals: (a) caregiver personal pr oblems/issues; (b) caregiver interpersonal problems/issues; (c) care r eceiver social support shortages and past abuse.