Good Practices in the Assessment of Victimization: The Spanish Adaptation of the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire

Objective: To provide the first validity evidence for the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ) under the causal indicators approach, using lifetime experiences of victimization in a community sample of adolescents, and to explore the associations between polyvictimization and psychopathological symptoms. Method: The final sample comprised 804 adolescents aged between 12 and 17 years (M = 14.52, SD = 1.76) and recruited from 7 secondary schools in northeastern Spain. Victimization experiences and psychopathological symptoms were assessed through the JVQ (Finkelhor, Hamby, Ormrod, & Turner, 2005) and the Youth Self-Report (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001). Results: There were low correlations between JVQ items, indicating that victimization events tend to be independent. The causal indicators model for causing psychological distress fitted the data, explaining up to 38% and 40% of the variance in internalizing and externalizing symptoms, respectively. Conclusions: An inappropriate approach to validation can have important consequences for applied research into victimization. Using a causal indicators approach it can be concluded that the JVQ is a valid assessment instrument that can obtain relevant information regarding victimization directly from children and adolescents. This information can be used to help tailor clinical interventions to the needs of child and adolescent victims.