Abstract
Domestic violence is a traumatic experience faced primarily by women all over the world. Thus, ways in which victims of domestic violence cope with the stress caused by violence emerge as in important area of inquiry. Calling attention to the issue, Charles C. Benight, Alexandra S. Harding-Taylor, Amanda M. Midboe and Robert L. Durham developed the DV-CSE scale in 2004. The DV-CSE scale aims to measure the coping self efficacy of female victims of domestic violence following the latest attack, and is used in clinics in the US that provide support to victims of violence who have suffered physical or psychological damage. In Turkey, where one in every three women is a victim of domestic violence, there are no studies on the subject. This present study represents the adaptation of the DV-CSE scale to Turkish and comprises validity and reliability analyses. The sample of the study consisted of 258 women who applied to various institutions in and around Izmir due to domestic violence. All of these women had faced some type of domestic violence within the previous six months (physical, sexual, emotional or economic). Following the completion of the pre-adaptation study, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to examine the validity of the measure. To investigate reliability, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used. The other method used to examine the reliability of the measure was structural reliability calculation. The analyses conducted showed that the DV-CSE-T (Turkish form) is a uni-dimensional and highly reliable scale for measuring levels of domestic violence coping self efficacy.
