The Inventory of Beliefs about Wife Beating: The Construction and Initial Validation of a Measure of Beliefs and Attitudes

Abstract

Although attitudes and beliefs about wife beating have been regarded as important for understanding the factors that cause and perpetuate woman abuse, researchers have not had adequate instruments to measure these attitudes and beliefs. This article reports on the construction of a scale of attitudes about wife beating and an assessment of the scale’s dimensionality and validity. Data were collected from 675 students, 94 residents of a mid-western city, 71 men who batter, and 70 advocates for battered women. Five reliable subscales were derived, and seven tests of validity were supported. Sympathetic attitudes toward battered women were related, as predicted, with liberal views of women’s roles and sympathetic attitudes toward rape victims. Abusers and advocates were the most dissimilar in their attitudes. Male and female students also differed significantly. Many of the results are analogous to those in studies of attitudes toward rape. Several possible uses of the measure are described.