THE ABUSE DIMENSIONS INVENTORY - INITIAL DATA ON A RESEARCH MEASURE OF ABUSE SEVERITY

Abuse characteristics and severity although critical constructs in chi ld maltreatment research, have been found to be among the constructs l east well measured by existing instruments. Three studies are presente d describing the development and testing of an instrument the Abuse Di mensions Inventory (ADI), designed to address these needs. The first s tudy surveys a national sample of professionals to determine rankings and agreement on rankings for abuse severity across a number of dimens ions. Scales on the ADI were constructed based on the results. The sec ond study examines interrater reliability of the instrument based on s emistructured interview data. The third study examines the instrument' s construct validity by factor analysis. The findings suggest that con siderable agreement exists on how professionals rank abuse features in terms of severity and that ADI scales based on these rankings can be reliably coded from interview data. Additionally, the instrument was f ound to possess a factor structure consistent with expectations.