Validation of the Intimate Partner Violence Responder Collaboration Scale with Child Welfare Workers

Background and Purpose: Child welfare professionals should be included in coordinated intimate partner violence (IPV) response efforts as the co-occurrence with child maltreatment is estimated to be as high as 97%. However, not all child welfare workers receive IPV training or feel prepared to address IPV on their cases. Victim service providers have corroborated this based on their perceptions of child welfare worker competence on IPV cases. Recent research on interagency collaboration explores facilitative factors and how they might promote both improved responder relationships and client outcomes. Using a mixed methods approach, the Intimate Partner Violence Responder Collaboration Scale (IPVRCS) was developed based on data from victim advocates, law enforcement, prosecutors, and batterer intervention program providers. The present study attempts to validate the IPVRCS with a sample of child welfare workers in Florida.

Methods: The 26-item IPVRCS was included in wave four of the Florida Study of Professionals for Safe Families, a longitudinal study of newly-hired child welfare workers. At wave four, participants had been out of preservice training for approximately 18 months and were included in the present analysis if they were currently working in child welfare and reported ever working cases with IPV. The final analytic sample was 348. Importantly, the initial IPVRCS indicated five factors: non-territorialism, competence, leadership, support, and openness. The competence factor contained items wherein participants assessed other responders’ IPV competence. This factor was excluded from data collection as the investigators determined child welfare workers may not be able to provide an accurate assessment of others’ competence based on the included items (e.g., “Responders receive adequate training about IPV”).

An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted in MPlus using weighted least squares means and variances adjusted (WLSMV) estimation with Kaiser normalization and an oblique Geomin rotation. Cronbach alpha internal consistency reliability were calculated for each resulting factor. Other analyses were conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the IPVRCS completed by child welfare workers.

Results: EFA results indicated a three-factor solution best fit the data with three Eigen-values over 1.00. The resulting factor model demonstrated adequate model fit statistics (χ²=666.09, df=250, p<.001; χ2/df = 2.66; RMSEA=.069, 90%CI of .063 and .076; CFI=.958, TLI=.945; SRMR=.038). Conceptually, these factors were identified as Non-Territorialism, Leadership, and Camaraderie. Each factor demonstrated good to excellent internal consistency reliability (⍺ from .827 to .901) with excellent reliability for the IPVRCS overall (⍺=.931).

Conclusions and Implications: The EFA resulted in a three-factor model of IPV responder collaboration: non-territorialism, leadership, and camaraderie. With some exceptions, items generally loaded onto similar conceptual factors as the initial EFA. Confirmatory factor analyses with additional child welfare workers and other responders are necessary to validate the IPVRCS. Notably, with the exclusion of the original competence subscale, IPVRCS items are not IPV specific. Thus, with adaptation to context and survey prompts, the IPVRCS might prove useful as a more general Responder Collaboration Scale across social service disciplines pending validation results.