Four measures of partner violence: Construct similarity and classification differences

Although measures of physical violence are commonly used to classify individuals as ''having sustained violence'' or ''not having sustained violence,'' little is known about the interrelationships among violence measures and whether variation across measures is random or systematic. In this study, 224 female undergraduates completed four different partner violence measures. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a one-factor model best fit the data, but that the measures did not represent the construct equally well (i.e., the congeneric model was significantly better than tau-equivalent and parallel measurement models), Frequency measures were more strongly associated with the latent construct, ''partner violence'' than were severity measures. Some variation across measures appears to be systematic; participants reporting milder and more infrequent violence were classified most inconsistently. Single violence measures may classify individuals unreliably.