Psychometric evidence of the transcultural adaptation of the Vulnerability Abuse Screening Scale (VASS) for the detection of violence against the elderly

Abstract Objective: to present preliminary psychometric evidence of the cross-cultural adaptation of the Vulnerability to Abuse Screening Scale. Method: The steps of cultural adaptation verified conceptual, item, semantic and measurement equivalence. For measurement equivalence and verification of the psychometric data of the study samples of 30 and 66 elderly persons, respectively, were used. Descriptive and inferential statistics (KR-20, T-Student Test, Pearson correlation, univariate ANOVA and the Fleiss’ Kappa Index) were used for analysis of results. Results: It was found that the age of the participants ranged between 60 and 84 years, with a majority of older women participants (n=38). The KR-20 value for the overall score of the instrument was 0.688. The values for the four dimensions proposed by the authors of the instrument were 0.528, 0.289, 0.552 and 0.303, respectively. Only the values of the subscales Vulnerability and Coercion proved to be close to those of the original study (0.550 and 0.390). Conclusion: The internal consistency values found in the present study ranged from moderate to good, indicating that the results were satisfactory, despite being initial findings.