Predicting implicit collusion with Rasch measures of injunctive and descriptive norms of intimate partner violence

The portrayal of IPV by the news media may impact the behavior of consumers directly via social norms while indirectly contributing to a social structure conducive to violence. This study relies on a novel measurement tool the author developed, based on state-of-the-art Rasch modeling, to measure the paradoxical cultural phenomena of "implicit collusion" with a perpetrator of intimate partner homicide (IPH), the most severe expression of IPV. Methods An experimental design was employed to establish the link between the news media portrayal of IPV and changes in an individual's IPV descriptive and injunctive social norms. Specifically, this study measured the degree to which people implicitly collude with IPV perpetration. In this project, Rasch techniques are used to provide measurements of injunctive and descriptive norms of intimate partner violence and used to predict the extent of implicit collusion in media accounts of intimate partner violence. Results/Outcomes Pretest data show infit and outfit statistics to be within standard ranges of 0.6 to 1.4 for items measuring both injunctive and descriptive norms and collusion, indicating that they are all unidimensional. Conclusions Rasch techniques enable valid measurement of injunctive and descriptive social norms and implicit collusion and allow creation of models for the relationship among the three.