Developing the Technique for Assessing the Degree of Victimization in Adults

Introduction. Victimity is a predisposition to become a victim of crime. Victimization is (a) the event of violence or the experience of violence, (b) the process of a subject's transformation into a victim of criminal assault, and also (c) the result of this process. The objective of this paper is to describe the procedure of developing a technique for assessing victimization in adults. No attention has been devoted to such techniques (tests) for adults in previous research. Methods. A combination of external, deductive, and inductive strategies helped to elaborate test tasks intended to assess the degree of victimization. Two contrasting groups (N=389 and N=400) participated in a pilot study. The comparison of the pilot testing results in these groups enabled the authors to select the test tasks for men and women. Results. The findings confirmed that the developed test met standard reliability criteria (internal consistency and test-retest stability and reliability). The developed test also meets all the known validity criteria such as validation of the test construction process and substantive, obvious, concurrent (diagnostic), consensual, construct, convergent, contrast, and gender validity. The test scales (subtests) diagnose the following seven types of victimization: (i) overall victimization, (ii) implemented victimization, predisposition to (iii) aggressive, (iv) self-destructive, (v) dependent, and (vi) non-critical victimization, and (vii) the degree of a subject's vulnerability to manipulation. Discussion. The construct of victimization as diagnosed by this test is positively correlated with the tendency to risky behavior, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem and negatively associated with assertiveness. All this corresponds well to the essence of victimization. The test standardization was carried out on a sample of 563 men and 513 women, representative of the study prospective population in terms of gender, age, education, profession, official capacity, social status, and region of residence. The representativeness of the study samples was confirmed by a normal distribution of test results.