The Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) team has published a new paper. The paper outlines the adaption, testing, and validation of the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire-R2: Adapted Version (Australian Child Maltreatment Study), which was used to collect data about child maltreatment in the landmark ACMS.
The paper titled “Adaptation and validation of the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire-R2 for a national study of child maltreatment in Australia” was published in Child Abuse and Neglect. It is freely available via open access under a creative commons license.
It builds on an earlier systematic review by team members that identified measurement issues in the field across all international studies. In particular, the fact that many studies did not include all five types of child maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic violence) and many measures were not congruent with the latest conceptual models of maltreatment.
To combat issues identified in the review the ACMS team spent two years undertaking a comprehensive approach to adapting the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire-R2 for use in the ACMS. A three-stage process was used:
- Conceptual analysis of the five forms of child maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional or psychological abuse, neglect, and experience of domestic violence), item mapping and review, item development, and independent expert review;
- Cognitive testing with members of the general population, and individuals who have experienced maltreatment; and
- Pilot testing and quantitative psychometric assessment with a random sample of Australians aged 16–65+ years.
The resulting instrument was the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire-R2: Adapted Version (Australian Child Maltreatment Study). Prevalence estimates using this newly adapted instrument will be published in early April alongside the ACMS launch at Queensland University of Technology on April 4th, 2023.
