Citation

Fekih-Romdhane F, Malaeb D, Yakın E, Sakr F, Dabbous M, Khatib SE, Obeid S, Hallit S. BMC Psychiatry 2024; 24(1): e12.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group - BMC)

DOI

10.1186/s12888-023-05465-6

PMID

38166731

PMCID

PMC10762985

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Accurately measuring violent ideations would be of particular high relevance in Arab countries, which are witnessing an unprecedented increase in violence rates among adolescents because of the widespread social, economic and political unrest in the region. Therefore, the present study aimed to test the psychometric properties of an Arabic translation of the 12-item and the 7-item forms of the Violent Ideations Scale (VIS and VIS-SF) in a sample on non-clinical Arabic-speaking adolescents.

METHODS: Five hundred seventy-seven community adolescents (mean age of 15.90 ± 1.73 years, 56.5% females) answered an anonymous online survey comprising an Arabic translation of the Violent Ideations Scale (VIS) and a measure of physical aggression.

RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) offered support for the single-factor structure of the Arabic VIS and the VIS-SF. Both the long and short forms of the scale yielded excellent internal consistency, with McDonald's ω coefficients of 0.96 and 0.94 and Cronbach's α coefficients of 0.96 and 0.94, respectively. Multi-group CFA established measurement invariance across gender groups. Finally, results revealed significant and positive correlations between the two forms of the VIS and physical aggression scores, thus supporting concurrent validity.

CONCLUSION: Both the VIS and VIS-SF have demonstrated good psychometric properties in their Arabic versions, and suitability for sound assessment of violent ideations. We therefore expect that these measures assist clinicians in risk assessment and management of violence, and help foster research in this area in Arab countries.

Language: en

Keywords

Adolescent; Humans; Female; Male; Violence; Surveys and Questionnaires; Reproducibility of Results; Psychometric properties; *Aggression; *Violence; Arabic; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Psychometrics; Violent ideations; Violent ideations acale