Elsevier

Child Abuse & Neglect

Volume 29, Issue 4, April 2005, Pages 383-412
Child Abuse & Neglect

The Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire: Reliability, validity, and national norms

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2004.11.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective:

To assess the utility and performance of the 34-item Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ) in eliciting the recent victimization experiences of a national sample of children ages 2–17.

Method:

The JVQ was administered in a national random digit dial telephone survey about the experiences of 2,030 children. The experiences of children 10–17 years old were assessed through youth self-report on the JVQ, and the experiences of children 2–9 assessed through JVQ caregiver proxy report.

Results:

Large numbers of recent victimizations were disclosed using the JVQ (71% of the sample reporting at least one victimization in the last year, with an average of 2.63 victimizations per child). There were few indicators of respondent confusion and little resistance to even the most sensitive questions. In a test of construct validity, endorsements of JVQ items correlated well with measures of traumatic symptoms. The instrument showed adequate test-retest reliability in a 3 to 4 week re-administration. Large numbers of victimizations were reported across the spectrum of ages, and there were no major discontinuities between the self-reports and proxy reports, suggesting that caregivers provided generally adequate and comparable information to child self-reports about the experiences of children under the age of 10.

Conclusion:

The JVQ has potential for use in future epidemiological research as well as clinical evaluation concerning the victimization of children.

Résumé

Objectif: Évaluer l’utilité et la performance d’un outil dit Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire, contenant 34 composantes, et d’obtenir des renseignements sur les expériences récentes de victimes faisant partie d’un échantillon national d’enfants âgés de 2 à 17 ans.

Méthode: Le questionnaire a été administré par le biais d’une enquête téléphonique nationale à caractère aléatoire portant sur les expériences de 2.030 enfants. Celles des enfants âgés de 10 à 17 ans ont été évaluées au moyen de témoignages par les jeunes eux-mêmes et, dans le cas des enfants âgés de 2 à 9 ans, au moyen des témoignages d’adultes qui s’occupaient d’eux.

Résultats: L’administration du questionnaire a produit un grand nombre de témoignages de mauvais traitements récents (71% de l’échantillon rapporte au moins une expérience durant l’année précédente, et la moyenne est de 2.65 expériences par enfant.) On a noté peu de confusion de la part des participants de l’étude et peu de résistance devant les questions les plus délicates. Ayant testé la validité de l’instrument, on note que le questionnaire est en corrélation directe avec des symptômes de traumatismes. Sur une période de 2 semaines, le questionnaire demeure fiable. Un grand nombre de mauvais traitements apparaissent sur toute la gamme des âges des enfants. On n’a noté aucune incohérence entre les témoignages des enfants eux-mêmes et ceux de leurs gardiens pour ce qui est des expériences des enfants âgés de moins de 10 ans.

Conclusions: Le questionnaire juvénile pourrait fort bien être utilisé dans de futures recherches épidémiologiques ainsi que pour des fins d’évaluation des expériences de mauvais traitements.

Resumen

Objetivo:

Evaluar la utilidad y el rendimiento de los 34 ítems del Cuestionario de Victimización Juvenil (JVQ) para informar sobre experiencias recientes de victimización en una muestra nacional de niños entre 2–17 años.

Método:

Se administró en JVQ a una muestra nacional de 2,030 niños seleccionada al azar a través de una encuesta telefónica. Las experiencias de los niños de entre 10–17 años fueron evaluadas a través del formato de autoinforme y las experiencias de los niños de 2–9 años fueron evaluadas a través del formato de aplicación al cuidador más próximo.

Resultados:

Utilizando el JVQ se descubrieron cifras importantes de de victimizaciones recientes (71% de la muestra notificó al menos una victimización en el último año con una media de 2.63 experiencias por niño). Hubo pocos indicadores de confusión entre los sujetos que responden y poca resistencia incluso a las preguntas más delicadas. En una prueba de validez de constructo, las respuestas a los ítems del JVQ correlacionaron bien con medidas de síntomas traumáticos. El instrumento mostró adecuados coeficientes de fiabilidad test-retest en la readministración a dos semanas. Fueron notificadas cifras importantes de victimización en los diferentes grupos de edad y no se observaron grandes incoherencias entre los autoinformes y los informes de los cuidadores más cercanos, lo que sugiere que los cuidadores pueden proporcionar información adecuada y comparable con la información de los niños a cerca de las experiencias infantiles ocurridas antes de los 10 años.

Conclusiones:

El JVQ tiene posibilidades para ser utilizado en la investigación epidemiológica y en la evaluación clínica relacionada con la victimización infantil.

Introduction

The Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ) was developed as a comprehensive, developmental approach to assess crime, child maltreatment, and other kinds of victimization experiences during childhood. It attempts to fill a need created by a burgeoning clinical and research interest in the epidemiology and impact of these experiences.

The JVQ was designed to meet certain needs that have not been fully met by other available instruments (Hamby & Finkelhor, 2000). Among them are the following.

A broad range of childhood victimizations have captured clinical and research attention, but few existing instruments cover the full spectrum to include child maltreatment, crime victimization, and sexual assault, as well as other topics such as bullying and the witnessing of violence. Researchers and clinicians can come to erroneous conclusions about the importance and impact of some victimizations if they are not aware of a child's complete victimization profile (Finkelhor, Ormrod, Turner, & Hamby, 2005).

Most kinds of victimization occur in some form across the span of childhood. Being able to obtain developmental trajectories and to assess children of various ages is an important value for an instrument in this field. Many other instruments are limited to certain age groups such as adolescents or elementary school-age children (Fox & Leavitt, 1995; for review see Hamby & Finkelhor, 2001a; Kilpatrick, Acierno, Saunders, Resnick, Best, & Schnurr, 2000; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996; Richters, Martinez, & Valla, 1990; Singer, Anglin, Song, & Lunghofer, 1995).

The agencies that deal with child victimization have specific categories into which they must classify victimizations for purposes of investigation and intervention. Police utilize categories such as aggravated assault. The child protective system utilizes a related but not identical category of physical abuse, which means physical assaults and inflicted injuries by caregivers. Many existing instruments have constructs that do not map easily onto these official categories.

Section snippets

General description

The JVQ contains screening questions about 34 offenses against youth that cover five general areas of concern: (1) Conventional Crime, (2) Child Maltreatment, (3) Peer and Sibling Victimization, (4) Sexual Victimization, and (5) Witnessing and Indirect Victimization (see Appendix A). Each of these five areas is a module of the JVQ. Although comprehensiveness is an important goal of the JVQ, these modules have been developed to take into account important conceptual categories that characterize

Participants

This research is based on data from the Developmental Victimization Survey (DVS). The survey, conducted between December, 2002 and February, 2003, assessed the experiences of a nationally representative sample of 2,030 children ages 2–17 living in the contiguous United States. The interviews with parents and youth were conducted over the phone by the employees of an experienced survey research firm specially trained to talk with children and parents. Telephone interviewing is a cost-effective

Patterns of endorsement

Large numbers of JVQ screeners were endorsed by the study respondents. The sample of 2,030 endorsed a total of 5,326 victimization screeners concerning experiences in the last year or an average of 2.63 endorsements per respondent; 71% of the respondents endorsed at least one item. The maximum number of endorsements was 20. The most frequently endorsed item (45%) was about being hit by a peer or sibling in the last year (Table 1). The items concerning emotional bullying, witnessing assault

Discussion

The performance of the JVQ in a national telephone survey suggests its potential utility as an instrument for measuring victimizations in epidemiological and research studies. It fulfilled the expectations of its developers and elicited information about large numbers of episodes across a range of victimization domains and across a wide spectrum of developmental stages. There were few indicators of respondent resistance or confusion. In a test of construct validity, endorsements of JVQ items,

Conclusion

The use of measures that assess only one or a few forms of victimization has impeded the ability to answer some key questions about youth victimization. These include identifying the extent to which children are multiply-victimized and comparing the relative effects of different forms of victimization. The JVQ offers a comprehensive measure of youth victimization that also uses definitions of victimization that closely correspond to police and child protection categories of crime and

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Kelly Foster for her help in the manuscript preparation, John Boyle and Patricia Vanderwolf for help in data collection, Kathy Becker-Blease for help with the questionnaire design and human subjects, and members of the Family Violence Research Seminar for helpful comments on the manuscript.

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