Objective

To perform a concurrent validation of the short version of the Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST), used to detect intimate partner violence, estimating the validity indexes in the general population.

Method

The information source was the third Intimate partner violence survey in the Region of Madrid (Spain) conducted on women aged 18-70 in 2014. As the gold standard we used the definition of intimate partner violence based on a 26- question survey. The short version of WAST includes two questions with three possible answers. The prevalence of intimate partner violence and the validity indexes were calculated and compared according to two scoring criteria with 95% confidence intervals (95%CI).

Results

The response rate was 60.0%, and 2979 surveys were analysed. The prevalence of intimate partner violence was 7.6% (95%CI: 6.6-8.5). We showed 21.1% (95%CI: 19.6-22.5) positive test results according to WAST criterion 1 and 11.0% (95%CI: 9.9-12.1) according to criterion 2. Criterion 2 presented higher overall efficiency of the test (81.5% [95%CI: 80.1-82.9] criterion 1 vs. 88.8% [95%CI: 87.7-89.9] criterion 2). The best indexes were obtained in women ≥30 years old.

Conclusions

The short version of the WAST showed acceptable validity indexes for use as a screening tool of intimate partner violence in the general population. We recommend using scoring criterion 2 to estimate prevalence of intimate partner violence in surveys on the general population.

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