Psychological violence is currently the commonest form of aggression in intimate partner relationships (Dokkedahl et al, 2022). There are numerous studies that recognise the especially pernicious nature of this phenomenon. Such assertions are based on findings that point towards psychological violence being not only the predecessor of other typologies, but also on the impact it has on the physical and mental health of the individual, through which the victims’ deterioration equals or even surpasses that of physical and sexual violence (Carreño, 2017; Doyle, 2020; Gabster et al, 2022; Kanemasa et al, 2022).

Among the psychological consequences of this type of violence, of particular importance are anxiety and depression, low self-esteem, social and family isolation, emotional dependence, insecurity, submission, and a lack of social adaptation. In addition, it is also related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the consumption of toxic substances and/or drugs, and suicidal tendencies (Chust-Morató et al, 2021; Dokkedahl et al, 2022; Esteves-Pereira et al, 2020; Rowther et al, 2023).

The lack of any agreed theoretical explanatory approaches concerning psychological violence, together with the absence of evaluation instruments and techniques, which would allow us to identify its diverse manifestations, constitutes a problem that severely hinders early detection and any consequent intervention when faced with such situations (Jaramillo-Correa et al, 2023).

It would thus seem that the first challenge in order to establish healthy relationships between couples is to exhaustively define psychological violence in its diverse manifestations. This is an arduous task, not only because of the multidimensional nature of the indicators present from the start, but also because of the normalization process to which it is currently subjected. Although we must stress the subtle forms that such violence can take on when it appears and becomes an integral part of the couple; we cannot forget the socio-cultural recognition that surrounds it due to the idealised model of romanticism that reigns still in our society (Fedele et al, 2019; Martín and Moral Jiménez, 2019).

Despite these difficulties that lead to psychological violence being the least studied form of aggression, there are theoretical approaches whose aim is to throw light on the concept. The idea most commonly accepted is that psychological violence can be understood as any form of conduct that causes the destruction of or emotional harm to an individual, damaging their personal development, either visibly or invisibly, through coercive tactics (Molina et al, 2014; Páramo et al, 2021; Tutiven-Abad et al, 2022; Vidal et al, 2024).

The greatest disagreement seems to lie in the mechanisms used to do so. Initially, O’Leary (1999) stated that psychological violence was exercised through such acts as recurrent criticism, verbal aggression and attacks towards the partner’s self-esteem. This definition set the basis for other, more recent definitions that stress the role of verbal aggression that harms the individual’s psychological stability, but without ignoring the importance of non-verbal expressions as a form of exercising violence through omission (Olivera-Carhuaz et al, 2022). Similarly, Colque (2020) and Tourné et al (2024) agree with the above definition, in that the destruction of the other’s self-esteem is a key means to inflicting psychological abuse. However, they add elements which they consider to be of equal relevance, such as generating feelings of guilt in the partner through intimidation and making them feel valueless.

There are many classifications of the manifestations of psychological violence which stress the indicators of a most generic psychological and verbal nature; even though reality teaches us that it is a complex phenomenon that can either have the clearest of evidence or only the slightest of visible manifestations (Villavicencio-Aguilar and Jaramillo-Paladinez, 2020).

Taverniers (2001), for his part, presents a categorization of the manifestations of psychological violence that offers a high level of exactitude when describing its forms of expression. She points out that psychological violence in intimate partner relationships can show itself through acts that make the victim fell valueless, invalidating the victim’s reality through ridicule, disqualification, trivialization, constant opposition and disdainful attitudes towards the other (Güleç and Özbay, 2024). Furthermore, she contemplates such behaviour patterns as reproaches, considered to be one of the most frequent forms of violence, insults and threats. She also takes into account less evident manifestations, such as a lack of empathy and support, indifference, and monopolising the victim’s interests, opinions or needs.

In the classification, Taverniers (2001) also incorporates behaviour that intimidates the victim on a verbal level (judging everything they do or say, criticising them for not thinking in the same way, and constantly correcting them), as well as through the expansive and violent use of the physical space (threatening postures and gestures and destructive behaviour aimed at objects of sentimental value or pets). His classification also includes one of the most destructive mechanisms of psychological violence: “gaslighting”. Here, the aggressor makes the victim doubt their own perceptions, their memory and even their mental health, negating or distorting the facts and accusing the victim of lying, imagining and inventing facts, and blaming them (Arabi, 2023; Huang et al, 2024). The imposition of behaviour is also considered by the author as a mechanism for exercising psychological violence, as an attempt to obtain absolute control over the victim, blocking social interaction. Similarly, in order to set these violent mechanisms in motion, aggressors can simulate love, interest and concern for the victim, in an attempt to justify their actions with the label of “apparent kindness”, which masks the implicit violence of abusive acts, generating profound emotional damage in the victim (Martínez et al, 2024).

On the basis of the above, the creation of an evaluation instrument to detect and measure psychological violence in intimate partner relationships is crucial if we wish to prevent it and achieve an effective treatment. There is currently no agreed definition of psychological violence that takes into account both its clearest manifestations (verbal attacks such as insults, threats, reproaches, orders, destructive behaviour…) and the least visible ones (gaslighting, negation, apparent kindness, trivializations, deflections, abusive insistence…). Neither are there precise evaluation techniques in the context of psychological violence within intimate partner relationships that can allow us to identify such manifestations with sufficient exactitude and detail.

It is also true that such instruments which have been created and used to evaluate psychological violence are aimed at measuring the general nature of the violence within the couple’s relationship, or within the context of gender related violence (Heise et al, 2019; Tourné et al, 2024). Most of the available instruments include psychological violence as a subscale, together with physical violence and sexual abuse. This could be considered the case of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS-2), by Straus et al (1996), one of the most commonly used scales in the sphere of intimate partner violence to measure psychological abuse; it also contemplates negotiation, physical aggression, sexual coercion and injuries. However, it does not include such important manifestations of psychological violence as trivialization, humiliation, indifference, intimidation (judging, criticising and correcting), manipulating reality, behavioural impositions (deflections) or even (gaslighting). Nevertheless, it is still an instrument of reference and remains one of the most commonly used.

In addition, there are other instruments of great impact, such as the Index of Spouse Abuse (ISA), proposed by Hudson and McIntosh (1981), which evaluates violence within couples, and in particular the magnitude and severity of the psychological aggression. However, it only contemplates a limited number of violent behaviour patterns. We should also mention other instruments, such as the Abuse Behavior Inventory (ABI), by Shepard and Campbell (1992), which does include such categories of psychological abuse as humiliation, isolation, intimidation and economic abuse. It also contemplates physical abuse, as it was originally designed for abusers.

As for specific measures, we should mention the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory (PMWI), by Tolman (1989), which focused on evaluating control through Dominance/Isolation and Emotional/Verbal Abuse. Nevertheless, it was originally designed for women who had suffered psychological maltreatment by their male partners. We should also mention Marshall’s Subtle and Overt Psychological Abuse of Women Scale (SOPAS) (2000, as cited in Buesa and Calvete, 2011), which, although it does contemplate a wider range of abusive behaviour, is an instrument validated and aimed exclusively at the female population.

A review of the most relevant scales or inventories used, both nationally and internationally, to analyse psychological violence reveals the need to create an instrument that can measure this phenomenon in both an integral and bidirectional way. That is, considering that psychological violence can be perceived from the perspective of both members of the couple and not only from the prism of gender.

Thus, the objective of this paper is to construct and validate psychometrically the Questionnaire on Psychological Violence in Intimate Partner Relationships (“Cuestionario de violencia psicológica en la pareja”, CVPPar). We analyse the validity of the questionnaire’s construct, confirming its reliability and examining the convergent validity with respect to other psychological measures. Unlike the reviewed instruments, the questionnaire is expected to allow psychological violence within couples to be evaluated independently of the member exercising said violence, considering the ample and complex spectrum of manifestations it presents and the subtle or overt nature of the same (Arabi, 2023).

In accordance with the objective of the study proposed in this paper and due to the lack of a tool to study psychological violence in an integral way, we addressed the creation of a valid and reliable research instrument to study the said phenomenon and its manifestations in intimate partner relationships. The Questionnaire on Psychological Violence in Intimate Partner Relationships (“Cuestionario de violencia psicológica en la pareja”, CVPPar) is thus presented as a tool to provide an in depth evaluation of psychological violence and its manifestations in intimate partner relationships, from the most overt to the most subtle levels of expression (Appendix Table 6).

As indicated in the results section, the instrument possesses psychometric properties which make it a relevant indicator of psychological violence in intimate partner relationships, independently of the gender of the perpetrator. Therefore, and unlike the majority of studies concerning psychological violence in intimate partner relationships, it is not necessarily directed at evaluating the violence of men against women, as a variant of gender based violence (Ahmed et al, 2024).

In this sense, its perpetration can be related to any member of a romantic couple, with profound and lasting consequences that affect the victim’s wellbeing. In this respect, prior research works have established that psychological violence has a serious impact on the victim’s health. The development of PTSD is in fact one of the main characteristics of the psychopathological profile, and added to that are other clinical symptoms such as depression or anxiety, as well as suicidal tendencies and a profound lack of social adaptation and interference in daily functioning (Esteves-Pereira et al, 2020). Apart from the evident repercussions this type of violence can have, this phenomenon is insidious, subtle and difficult to detect. As did previous works of research, this fact underlines the critical need for an effective, reliable and valid method with which to identify and accurately and systematically evaluate this form of violence in the male and/or female population (Almendros et al, 2009; Arabi, 2023).

Thus, starting with the exhaustive categorization of the manifestations of psychological violence carried out by Taverniers (2001), and based on the theoretical considerations, the CVPPar is clearly an instrument that is responsive to a wide range of violent behaviour and experiences that occur within intimate partner relationships. Examining the information provided by this instrument concerning such dimensions of psychological violence in intimate partner relationships as devaluation, hostility, indifference, intimidation, imposition of behaviour, blaming and apparent kindness, facilitates the goal of eventually eradicating this phenomenon which gradually and progressively degrades and negates the victim (Tourné et al, 2024).

Unlike other studies that measure intimate partner violence in general, contemplating only a limited number of violent behaviour types, this research stresses the need to explore the most difficult manifestations to detect precisely because of their inherent danger (Heise et al, 2019). Such is the case of trivialization (which includes devaluation), blaming (including gaslighting, denial) and abusive insistence and deflecting, as ways of imposing behavioural restrictions and manipulating reality as though such manipulation were an act of apparent kindness.

Such instruments as the widely used CTS-2 of Straus et al (1996) provides a robust framework for evaluating violence within couples, with the global scale achieving a Cronbach’s $\alpha$ of 0.93. Nevertheless, unlike the CVPPar, it considers psychological abuse as simply a subscale, together with negotiation, physical aggression, sexual coercion and injuries, apart from the more subtle manifestations of psychological violence. Similarly, it stands apart from other instruments such as the Inventory of Psychological Abuse in Intimate Partner Relationships (IAPRP) of Calvete et al (2005), given that the model is unidimensional, with a Cronbach’s $\alpha$ of 0.99, validated in samples of women and focused on the evaluation of annual prevalence, chronicity and annual frequency, without differentiating between the various manifestations of psychological violence. In this way, the PMWI of Tolman (1989), which has two factors and a reliability of 0.972 for the global scale, measured through Cronbach’s $\alpha$, was also originally designed for women who had suffered psychological maltreatment. Despite the great value these instruments possess in the clinical context, the CVPPar provides an integral evaluation of psychological violence, with a reliability of 0.955 for the global scale, measured using Cronbach’s $\alpha$. Its method is also effective and exhaustive, using a multidimensional model that takes into account the fact that these violent behaviour patterns can be perpetrated independently of gender.

Furthermore, from this perspective, having valid and reliable psychometric instruments is essential as a source of quantitative data to understand the differences, patterns and correlations of psychological violence according to the different variables. In this respect, significant differences have been found in devaluation, intimidation and imposition of behaviour according to gender, the scores being greater in women. In addition, concerning age, we have shown that the older age group (21 to 23 years) has higher scores in devaluation, imposition of behaviour and blaming. In this sense, different studies indicate that women suffer intimate partner violence to a greater extent, as well as coactive interaction patterns at a young age (Caldwell et al, 2012; Hokoda et al, 2012).

Among the study’s limitations, we must mention the low reliability presented by the Apparent kindness factor. This dimension is represented by smaller number of items, the number being theoretically fundamental in order to show the manipulation of reality contemplated by Taverniers (2001) in his categorization. Simulating love and interest in order to justify violent conduct is an apparent act of kindness which hides the manipulation of reality (Martínez et al, 2024). Along these lines, given the theoretical relevance and clinical implications, the need to include a factor with these characteristics is justified. Furthermore, the selection procedure for the sample limits the representative nature of the said selection, as well as the generalisation of the results obtained. Therefore, in future studies, it would be interesting to use a probabilistic sampling. On the other hand, we would not have a measure completely equivalent to the CVPPar, taking into account the fact that we would be analysing the validity by means of variables that are theoretically related.

The present investigation aims to design and validate an instrument for measuring psychological violence in relationships and to determine its psychometric properties. To conclude, we must point out that the Questionnaire on Psychological Violence in Intimate Partner Relationships (“Cuestionario de violencia psicológica en la pareja”, CVPPar) is the product of a complex and prolonged process of design and validation, in which the applied techniques offer a psychometric guarantee of validity and reliability for its use by the scientific community. Similarly, this questionnaire not only constitutes a complete tool for acquiring a global vision of psychological violence and its manifestations in intimate partner relationships, but it is also a resource with an important value for application in clinical psychology, propitiating the detection of this problem for prevention and/or treatment of the victims. It will allow concrete measures to be taken aimed at the manifestations of psychological violence suffered by each and every victim, thus achieving an adequate adjustment to the particular circumstances surrounding each individual situation.

The authors confirm that all data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Conceptualization, LP-D, MB-A and JMM-M; methodology, LP-D, MB-A and JMM-M; software, LP-D, MB-A and JMM-M; formal analysis, LP-D, MB-A and JMM-M; investigation, LP-D, MB-A and JMM-M; writing, LP-D, MB-A, and JMM-M; supervision, MB-A and JMM-M. All authors contributed to editorial changes in the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. All authors have participated sufficiently in the work and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

All the procedures carried out complied with the directives concerning their adaptation to the International Test Commission (ITC; Hambleton, 2001), as well as to the ethical standards of the University of Extremadura (Ref.: 92/2020) and to the Declaration of Helsinki of 1964 and its later modifications or comparable ethical standards. All subjects gave informed consent for inclusion before participating in the study.

This research received no external funding.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

See Table 6.