Index of Spouse Abuse
Date
1978
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Marriage and the Family
Abstract
McIntosh and Hudson developed the Index of Spouse Abuse (ISA) in 1978 as a short-form scale designed for medical professionals to either detect intimate partner violence or monitor and evaluate progress in abused women within clinical settings. ISA is a 30-item questionnaire intended to be self-administered by the patient. The questionnaire encourages patients to respond to its questions on a scale of one to five, where one is “Never” and five is “Very Frequently.” The ISA items ask patients about partner behaviors ranging from ‘demanding obedience,’ to ‘demanding sex,’ to ‘acts like he would like to kill me.’ ISA does maintain to measure magnitude of abuse; it is not just a tool to detect the presence or absence of abuse, but attempts to actually reveal its severity. This public domain tool is validated only for use with adult English-speaking women and is intended to detect male-on-female violence. (CVR Abstract)
Description
Cost: No
Training Available: Unspecified
Number of Items: 30
Training Available: Unspecified
Number of Items: 30
item.page.type
Instrument
item.page.format
Tool
Keywords
Domestic Violence, Screening, Detection, Self-administered, Population: Adults, Physical Abuse, Nonphysical Abuse
Citation
Hudson, W. W., & McIntosh, S. R. (1981). The assessment of spouse abuse: Two quantifiable dimensions. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 873-888.