Violência doméstica: instrumentos de aferição de violência contra o idoso no ambiente de avaliação geriátrica ampla

Abstract

Domestic violence is not a recent phenomenon. Violence against the elderly, about which there are scarce data in Brazil, plays an important role in such phenomenon. An accurate and systematic documentation is needed if one aims to set up research programs to explore risk factors, specific threshold situations, consequences, magnitude and care for the victims of violence. This thesis is concerned with the cross-cultural adaptation to the Brazilian culture of known elderly violence screening instruments. The specific target population consisted of elderly people living in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The secondary goal was to included such screening to functional evaluation of the elderly, for seasons that will be exposed presently. Chapter 1 concerns the thesis presentation. Chapter II offers an introduction to the problem of domestic violence and explores the issue of elder abuse from a brief historical perspective, as well as showing some data regarding magnitude, risk factors and evaluation of elder abuse are shown. Chapter 3 offers a detailed justification for the studies that were developed for this thesis. In the Chapter 4 the methods for the conception of the three resulting studies are described. The three articles are shown in detail in Chapter 5. The first article reviews the international literature in search for screening instruments for violence in the elderly. Thirteen instruments were found but only the Conflict Tactics Scales had been adapted to the Brazilian culture, albeit for use in a younger age group. The second article describes the evaluation of concept, semantic and item equivalence of one chosen instrument that screens for violence from caregiver perspective (Caregiver Abuse Screen CASE). It was possible to establish a Brazilian version but there still remains the evaluation of a screening tool for the elderly, including measurement equivalence (Hwalek & Sengstock Elder Abuse Screening Test H-S/EAST). Roughly, three factors were found in accordance with the original description. However, there were discrepancies in the loadings of some items to each factor which led to somewhat different interpretations from the original. In the same way, reliability analysis uncovered some problems that will have to be faced before the HS/EAST can be used in Brazil without restrictions. The sixth and last Chapter of thesis offers a general discussion on the importance of valid and reliable measurements in epidemiology and concludes with an overview of ensuing studies and projects.