The abuse-related beliefs questionnaire for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the psychometric properties of a new measure, the Abuse-Related Beliefs Questionnaire (ARBQ), designed to assess abuse-related beliefs among adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Study 1 examined the structure of the scale, and Study 2 evaluated its reliability and validity.


METHODS
One hundred and seventy female CSA survivors recruited into a group psychotherapy intervention study were administered the ARBQ in Study 1. A subsample of 45 women completed the ARBQ again 12 months later. In Study 2, 70 women from a health maintenance organization who identified themselves as survivors of CSA completed the ARBQ along with the Trauma Symptom Checklist-40 (TSC-40) and the Symptom Checklist 90R (SCL-90-R).


RESULTS
Three reliable ARBQ subscales emerged in Study 1: Guilt, Shame, and Resilience. Twelve-month test-retest reliability was high (r=.60-.64). The internal consistency of the subscales was further supported in Study 2, and validity was demonstrated by moderate to high correlations with the distress measures.


CONCLUSIONS
The results indicate that the ARBQ has good psychometric characteristics, supporting the feasibility of its use in measuring abuse-related beliefs in research on survivors of CSA. A next step for validation of the ARBQ would be to evaluate its sensitivity in measuring changes in studies of interventions for treating CSA survivors.
Ginzburg
Karni
K
Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
Arnow
Bruce
B
Hart
Stacey
S
Gardner
William
W
Koopman
Cheryl
C
Classen
Catherine C
CC
Giese-Davis
Janine
J
Spiegel
David
D
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011287:Prejudice; D011594:Psychometrics; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D017741:Survivors / Q000523:psychology*