Group Psychological Abuse Perpetration: Development and Validation of a Measure Using Classical and Modern Test Theory

Objective: The Psychological Abuse Perpetrated in Groups Scale (PAPGS) is a new measure aimed to assess psychological abuse behaviors perpetrated by members of groups where control, manipulation, and coercion strategies are inflicted to recruit and dominate people. The goals of this study were to develop this instrument and to determine its psychometric properties using classical test theory and item response theory. Method: An online questionnaire was administered to an international sample of 1,480 former members of different groups, 946 victims of group psychological abuse and 534 nonvictims. Results: Classical test theory analyses provided evidence of the unidimensional structure of the PAPGS, its internal consistency, and its great ability to discriminate between victims and nonvictims. Item response theory analyses also showed excellent item-level discrimination, an adequate range of difficulty parameters, and high precision when evaluating different levels of perpetrated group psychological abuse. Furthermore, significant correlations were found between PAPGS scores and measures of experienced group psychological abuse and psychological distress. Conclusions: The PAPGS showed good psychometric properties and appears to be a useful tool to further research the causes and negative consequences of psychological abuse behaviors perpetrated in abusive groups. This line of research may be helpful in clinical settings to better help former members of abusive groups to cope with the negative behaviors they engaged in while in the group. It may also be useful in legal settings when making decisions about individuals who actively participated in abusive group dynamics and committed criminal acts against other group members.