Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is a major public health problem with serious consequences for women’s physical and psychological health. Victim-blaming attitudes can shape a social climate of acceptance where IPVAW can be perceived as normative, affecting the responses of individuals, communities, and institutions to this problem. Ecuador is one of the countries with the highest prevalence of IPVAW in Latin America, and research addressing this issue is still scarce. The aim of this study is to adapt and validate the Spanish Scale of Victim-Blaming Attitudes in Cases of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women (VB-IPVAW) to the Ecuadorian cultural context. To this end, the psychometric properties of this scale were assessed in a sample of 1122 Ecuadorian participants, and also its measurement invariance across gender in a second sample of 400 college students. The potential social desirability bias of the items was also examined. Results showed that the VB-IPVAW scale has an excellent internal consistency, is related to other constructs, such as perceived severity of IPVAW and ambivalent sexism, their items presented low loadings of social desirability, and its invariant across gender. The adaptation of the VB-IPVAW scale to the Ecuadorian cultural context constitutes a step forward in the study and understanding of victim-blaming attitudes, providing a reliable and valid instrument to assess these attitudes.

Keywords:
Victim blaming, attitudes, intimate partner violence, violence against women, measurement

RLP_52_24_20145

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