Severity of Violence Against Women Scales Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The Severity of Violence Against Women Scales (SVAWS) was created by Marshall to assess the frequency and severity of physical aggression committed by women’s partners. The primary purpose of developing the SVAWS was to create a more comprehensive and sensitive instrument than those available at the time. As a result, the 46-item SVAWS consists of three subscales that differ in level of severity (i.e., threats of violence, acts of violence, and sexual aggression). These scales can be further divided into nine dimensions with each item weighted for severity. Specifically, the threats of violence subscale is composed of 19 items measuring symbolic violence and threats of mild, moderate, and serious acts of violence (e.g., driven dangerously with you in the car, shook a fist at you, threaten to destroy property, threatened to kill you, respectively). The acts of violence subscale is composed of 21 items measuring minor, mild, moderate, and serious acts of physical violence (e.g., pushed or shoved you, pulled your hair, slapped you with the back of his hand, and choked you, respectively). Finally, 6 items measure sexual aggression inflicted by an intimate partner (e.g., physically forced you to have sex). Items were ordered based on the perceived severity of the acts. When completing the measure, women indicate how often their partner has inflicted each of the acts in a given period of time with a 6-point scale anchored by never (0) and a great many times (5). A moderate correlation between the acts of violence and sexual aggression scales has been reported, while a high correlation has been found between the threats of violence and acts of violence scales.

The ability of the SVAWS to distinguish between threats of violence, actual acts of violence, and sexual aggression along with the ability to consider different severity levels permits the examination of the unique effects of different types and levels of violence. For example, the SVAWS could be used to study the mental health effects of physical violence or sexual aggression or their combined effect. Of note, the SVAWS has demonstrated good reliability across a variety of studies and cultures and has been translated into over 10 languages.

A similar version of the SVAWS was created for male victims of partner violence labeled the Severity of Violence Against Men Scales (SVAMS). Although composed of the same 46 items, the SVAMS does not have a symbolic violence subscale. In addition, because men’s and women’s perception of severity differed, scales are composed of slightly different items. For example, whereas “kicked (your partner)” is considered a mild act of violence when measuring female to male violence, it is considered a severe act of violence when measuring male to female violence.

Bibliography:

Marshall, L. L. (1992). Development of the Severity of Violence Against Women Scales. Journal of Family Violence, 7, 103–121.
Marshall, L. L. (1992). The Severity of Violence Against Men Scales. Journal of Family Violence, 7, 189–203.

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