Executive Summary
Domestic Violence Myths:
Construction And Validation of a New Measure
Jay Peters, Ph.D.
School of Social Work
University of Maine, Orono, ME
Since 1980 the concept of myths about rape has been thoroughly studied and
widely publicized. Today most people know that there is a group of generally false yet
persistently held beliefs which tend to blame the victim, minimize the seriousness, and
excuse the perpetrator of rape. Research has shown that such beliefs are widely held,
are linked to actual perpetration of rape, and fit within an overarching system of beliefs
about and attitudes toward women.
Among people who work with batterers and battered women there is
widespread agreement that there exist a similar set of persistently held yet generally
false myths about domestic violence. Commonly heard myths include statements that
the victim instigates the violence, that she could avoid it if she wanted, that she must
enjoy being roughed up if she stays, or that domestic violence is just a lovers’ spat,
nothing serious. Curiously, no measure of domestic violence myths currently exists.
The present research was therefore undertaken to fill the need for a valid and reliable
measure of domestic violence myths.
The study was based on defensive attribution theory from the field of social
psychology and on radical feminist theories about domestic violence. In particular,
radical feminist theory contends that myths serve social functions. For example,
Jay Peters
Domestic Violence Myth Acceptance Scale
2
domestic violence myths imply that the abuse is not serious and the victim is not really
a victim because she caused the abuse and, perhaps, even unconsciously desires it.
These domestic violence myths reduce social support for battered women and thus
support patriarchy. Defensive attribution theory adds a complementary layer which
indicates that such myths serve an individual, psychologically defensive function by
defending women from the threat of possible victimization and by helping males avoid
feelings of blame. Myths thus serve both social and individual functions
simultaneously.
Based on those literatures as well as clinical experience working with batterers
and battered women, I constructed an preliminary scale of 80 statements and questions
(items). In the first of two studies used to evaluate that scale, 1,994 people were
randomly selected from everyone at The University of Maine who had a FirstClass email account. Of these people, 345 responded to all 80 questions. I then analyzed those
responses to weed out the items which contributed little to the scale. Ultimately I
ended up with 18 items which had good reliability ( = .81) which indicates the scale is
likely to produce consistent results. Factor analysis of those items revealed precisely
the four aspects of domestic violence myths expected: character blame of the victim,
behavioral blame of the victim, minimization of the seriousness, and exoneration of the
perpetrator. The scale thus passed its first test of validity (which assesses whether or
not the scale is it measuring what we think it is measuring).
With these encouraging results I then undertook a second study which was
designed to further assess the validity of the 18-item instrument. For this study a new
Jay Peters
Domestic Violence Myth Acceptance Scale
3
random sample of FirstClass email account holders completed the myth scale (DVMAS)
as well as six other existing scales. According to theory, I expected responses to the
DVMAS to be strongly correlated with the four scales measuring sex-role stereotyping,
rape myths, negative attitudes toward women, and (general) attitudes toward wife
abuse. This expectation was strongly supported indicating that the scale correlated
with things that theory said it should correlate with and thus demonstrated good
convergent construct validity. I also expected that the scale would not correlate
strongly or significantly with a measure of attitudes toward use of violence by
governments and a measure of how much people are giving socially desirable
responses. The expectation was supported for the social desirability: there was only a
very weak, non-significant relationship between my myth scale responses and social
desirability. The expectation was not supported regarding the measure of use of
violence by governments. Instead the DVMAS and the violence by governments scale
had a moderately strong correlation (r = .34). This finding may indicate that the scale
can’t distinguish between different attitudes toward violence or that people who more
strongly endorse myths about domestic violence also more strongly support use of
violence by governments. Future research should tease out that distinction. For now,
divergent validity of the DVMAS was only partially supported.
Evidence of the criterion validity of the scale came from results which indicated
that as expected, DVMAS scores were higher for men than for women (this has been
found with all studies of other myths about interpersonal violence) and for younger
compared to older females. In addition, factor analysis of the final study data again
Jay Peters
Domestic Violence Myth Acceptance Scale
4
revealed a good fit between the data and the theory thus indicating that the DVMAS
possesses construct validity. Interestingly the reliability of the scale in this second
study increased to .88 indicating that the scale is a reliable measure.
In brief, the scale performed well by all measures, demonstrating good reliability
and many preliminary indicators of validity. This study, of course, has important
limitations. For example we cannot generalize the results beyond a University
population. After further research validating the scale with diverse samples, this
instrument can be used to explore the hypothesized link between attitudes and
behavior related to domestic violence. Do men who score higher on the DVMAS report
past or commit future abuse? In addition, the scale can be used to evaluate programs
which seek to change the myths which support domestic violence. Substantively, this
study appears to support the radical feminist proposition that domestic violence is
supported by a cluster of negative attitudes about women, their rights and their roles.