Exposure to Violence (ETV) - Subject Baseline
This measure appears in the following time-points: Baseline.
Related Construct
Description of Measure
The Exposure to Violence Inventory (ETV; Selner-O'Hagan, Kindlon, Buka, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1998) was modified for this study to assess the frequency of exposure to violent events. Items from the ETV document the types of violence the adolescent has both experienced (i.e., Victim - 6 items, e.g., "Have you ever been chased where you thought you might be seriously hurt?") and observed (i.e., Witnessed - 7 items, e.g., "Have you ever seen someone else being raped, an attempt made to rape someone or any other type of sexual attack?"). In addition to these items about experiences with violent incidents, four questions inquire about the youth's exposure to death (e.g. has anyone close to you tried to kill him/her self, has anyone close to you died, have you ever found a dead body, have you ever tried to kill yourself). Finally, one open-ended item assesses involvement in other types of situations which could have led to death or serious injury. In total, this scale inquires about 17 types of situations. If an item is endorsed, a series of follow-up questions are asked. For most items (all of the "victim" and "witness" items with the exception of rape), the follow-up questions are limited to the frequency of the event. If the subject reveals that he/she has been raped or sexually assaulted, more detail is obtained. Specifically, four additional questions are asked (i.e. "has it happened more than once", "relationship of perpetrator", "location of incident", and "location if other").
A multidimensional two-factor CFA model where certain measurement errors were allowed to covary was fit to the Pathways baseline data. For this model, NFI and NNFI are .927 and .927 respectively; the value of CFI = .944 and RMSEA = .047 (6/8/04). Confirmatory factor analyses were also conducted for each of the subscales (victim and witnesses). For the witness subscale, the following values were obtained: NFI: .95; NNFI: .935; CFI: .957; RMSEA: .069. For the victimization subscale, a confirmatory factor analysis revealed that a standardized solution containing all the items for this subscale that allowed the measurement error between items expv10 ("have you ever been shot at") and expv12 ("have you ever been shot") to covary showed acceptable fit (NFI=0.964, NNFI=0.957, CFI=0.977, RMSEA=0.035).
Three scores are computed with higher scores indicating a greater exposure to violence:
- Exposure to Violence - Victim [s0expvic]; count of items where subject was victim
- Exposure to Violence - Witnessed [s0expwit]; count of items subject witnessed
- Exposure to Violence - Total [s0exptot]; sum of the victim and witness scales endorsed
Data Issues
- Items s0expv17 - s0expv21 (which capture information on people close to the subject who may have died during the past six months) were all added to the interview in version 01.03.
References
- Selner-Ohagan, M., Kindlon, D., Buka, S., Raudenbush, S., and Earls, F. (1998). Assessing exposure to violence in urban youth. Journal of child Psychology and Psychiatry and allied Disciplines, 39(2), 215-224.