Preliminary findings on the psychometric properties of the ICAST-home among children in Southeast Nigeria

Background

Child abuse is a significant global public health issue, with a high prevalence in Southeast Nigeria. Developing and evaluating screening tools that are sensitive and specific to local conditions is critical.

Objective

The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of the ICAST-Home in a sample of children who reside in Southeast Nigeria.

Method

Participants were 127 (53 boys and 74 girls) children drawn from two government secondary schools in Enugu South Local Government, Enugu State, Southeast, Nigeria. Participants ages ranged from 11 to 18 (M = 15.67; SD = 2.07). Participants were selected using a multi-stage sampling. Data was collected using a 36-item ICAST-Home version. Descriptive statistics, internal consistencies, independent t-tests and linear regression were used to analyse the data in SPSS version 25.

Results

The findings of the study reported a prevalence rate of 28.76 % for child abuse. The scale yielded a good α ranging from .70 to .92, except for sexual victimisation which had an α of 67. However, the KR20 reported a high internal consistency for the scales. There were significant gender differences in violence exposure and sexual victimisation. The study further showed that boys reported higher violence exposure, girls reported higher sexual victimisation and overall higher child abuse experiences. Older children reported higher psychological victimisation, physical victimisation, sexual victimisation, and overall child abuse experiences.

Conclusion

Findings of the variation in reliability across the different subscales point to possible cultural adaptations that should be done for the ICAST-Home for the Southeast region of Nigeria.