The development of a psychometric scale for the assessment of emotional vulnerability in victims of crime

This thesis explores the psychological correlates of victim isation and, in particular, the
assessment and treatment of psychological distress in victims of crime. The thesis
begins with a systematic review of the effectiveness of interventions in reducing
psychological symptoms in victims of crime. The focus of the thesis, thereafter, is on
the development of a psychometric scale to assist criminal justice practitioners in the
assessment of emotional vulnerability in victims of crime.
An initial item pool was generated from victims' responses to an open-ended
questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis of the preliminary scale, which was
administered to a large sample of victims of crime, uncovered two factors, which were
labelled Emotional Vulnerability and Crime-Specific Anger. Both subscales
demonstrated high internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The factor structure of
the new scale, labelled the Victim Reactions Scale, was confirmed in a new sample of
victims of crime using structural equation modelling techniques. The subscales were
found to correlate meaningfully with conceptually similar constructs. The Emotional
Vulnerability scale demonstrated strong correlations with measures of posttraumatic
stress disorder and anxiety. Crime-Specific Anger was associated with measures of
anger and in the subsample of male victims also demonstrated substantial correlations
with measures of psychological distress. An experimental study showed that high
scores on the Emotional Vulnerability scale were strongly related to an attentional bias
towards crime-related threat words. Emotional Vulnerability also demonstrated
associations with demographic and victimisation variables, which were consistent with
the literature on victims of crime.
In conclusion, this thesis presents evidence for the reliability and construct validity of a
new victim-specific psychometric scale, which is thought to measure emotional
vulnerability and anger in relation to a criminal victimisation experience. The Victim
Reactions Scale, in particular the Emotional Vulnerability subscale, could potentially be
used within the criminal justice system to identify victims of crime who are in need of
more in depth psychological assessment and treatment.