Psychometric Properties of the Violence Exposure Scale in Ecuadorian Adolescents and Its Relationship with Child-to-Parent Violence

Introduction: Exposure to violence is an adverse experience associated with the perpetration of violent future behaviors such as child-to-parent violence. Objective: The objectives were to analyze the psychometric properties of the Violence Exposure Scale (VES) in a sample of Ecuadorian adolescents as well as its measurement invariance by sex and age; analyze the differences in exposure to violence across four settings (home, school, street, and TV), in two time frames (last year and childhood), according to sex and age; and analyze the relationship between exposure to violence in the four settings and in both time frames with child-to-parent violence. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using a probabilistic sample of 2150 Ecuadorian adolescents (55% female), aged 12 to 18 years (M = 14.53; SD = 1.55). Participants completed the adapted version of the VES and the Child-to-Parent Violence Questionnaire (CPV-Q). Confirmatory factor analyses, reliability testing, convergent and discriminant validity analyses, and measurement invariance assessments were performed. Results: The VES showed excellent model fit in both versions, VES¹ (last year) and VES² (before age 10), with strong goodness-of-fit indices (VES¹: CFI = 0.988; RMSEA = 0.055; VES²: CFI = 0.994; RMSEA = 0.044). Reliability was good (α_o and ω_o ≤ 0.80; G.6 and CR ≤ 0.70). Effect sizes ranged from 0.11 to 0.31 for violence by children toward parents and reached up to 0.83 among the different forms of victimization. Conclusions: The adaptation of the VES in Ecuadorian adolescents showed validity and reliability in assessing exposure to violence. Girls were more at risk at home, while boys were more exposed at school and in the community.