Psychometric Properties of the Coercion in Intimate Partner Relationships Scale

Abstract

Coercive control is defined as the systematic use of demands, threats, and surveillance behaviors to gain control over an individual. Content validity appears to be an issue for existing measures of coercive control tactics, as they do not assess all of these behaviors. This study investigated the validity and reliability of the Demand, Threat, Surveillance, and Response to Demands subscales of the Coercion in Intimate Partner Relationships (CIPR) scale. Participants (N = 541) completed online measures of coercive control, physical intimate partner violence, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptomatology. Confirmatory factor analyses, linear regressions, and correlational analyses investigated the construct (i.e., concurrent, convergent, and discriminant) validity of the CIPR subscales. Internal consistency of the subscales and test–retest reliability were also examined. Results provided support for the validity and reliability of the CIPR. Implications and usage of the CIPR in research and practice are discussed. We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions, all manipulations, and all measures in the study.