Maudsley Violence Questionnaire - Literature review Example

? The Maudsley Violence Questionnaire (MVQ) Number Maudsley Violence Questionnaire The Maudsley Violence Questionnaire measures cognitions relating to violent Behavior. The MVQ is a 54-item questionnaire covering a range of cognitions (beliefs, rules, distortions and attributions) that may provide justifications, support, or injunctions to violence. Each item is rated true/false. The MVQ comprises two factors: Machismo, which relates to embarrassment over backing down, violence as an aspect of being male, justification of violence as a way of responding to a threat and/or an attack, and the strength and weakness associated with non-violence and fear; Acceptance of violence including overt acceptance and enjoyment of violence, in sport and in the media as well injunctions against violence as a behavior that is acceptable (Walker, 2005; Gilligan, 1996). The idea behind the development of the MVQ was to produce a measure that assessed dysfunctional assumptions and the self-related core beliefs (schemas), which were influential in violent and aggressive behaviors. The MVQ was designed from a cognitive behavioral perspective, suggesting that violence is a macho response to threatened self-esteem. It is proposed that violence is a legitimized strategy to cover low self esteem, which has been further threatened in a social interaction. A factor analysis of the MVQ revealed machismo to be a primary subscale of the MVQ which strongly predicted self-reported delinquency (Walker, 2005). Given that the MVQ was specifically conceived to relate to violence, it would be expected that the MVQ factors would be better predictors of violence than personality factors, but that in keeping with previous studies, psychoticism would be a better predictor of overall offending. Machismo is a cognitive style rather than a personality factor and the specific nature of machismo makes it more relevant for violent offending, but less perhaps relevant for other types of offending. The exploration of the relationship of the MVQ factors to personality and self-esteem will help to demonstrate whether the MVQ factors are related to or independent of personality factors and whether there is a relationship between self-esteem, violent cognitions and self-reported violent behavior. The major theme in the development of the questionnaire was using violence to protect self esteem and as a response to embarrassment (Gilligan, 1996). The theme is important in the context of the youths as there is support in literature suggesting that there have been considerations of belief which allow violence and believe in its use to promote self esteem. These are significant predictors of violent acts. Different aspects of the theme are generated through the listing of beliefs that are common and consultation with colleagues. The items in the questionnaire are rated as true or false and analysis of the different factors leaves a clinical measure that is more robust and feasible. There is a paucity of research into the relationship between cognitive style and violence. Thus Walker’s Maudsley Violence Questionnaire was developed to address this problem. The use of violent action in response to embarrassment and to protect threatened self-esteem was a key theme in the development of the questionnaire. The MVQ, unlike other measures of offending in general, is specific to violence and designed for use across a spectrum of violent offenders and non-violent individuals (Walker, 2005). According to Walker (2005), the MVQ is the only measure of violent thoughts that has been factor analyzed using a large, normally distributed sample. Following factor analysis items remained loading on two factors: Acceptance of violence and Machismo. The MVQ provides a measure of a ‘macho’ belief system linked to violence and of beliefs about the legitimacy of violence. In the initial validation study (Walker, 2005), Acceptance of violence and Machismo were significantly positively correlated with self-reported violent delinquency for both men and women. For men both factors predicted both violent and non-violent delinquency, but for women this was only true of Acceptance of violent acts. Walker (2005) concluded that the cognitive style more likely to put men at risk for future violence is the endorsement of both acceptance of violence and Machismo items. In a second publication from the same study there is a strong support for the validity of the MVQ, by comparing it with existing measures of personality and self-esteem. This study found that the best predictor of self-report violence for men was Machismo. A further study has used the MVQ in a student population investigating the role of cognition in the involvement of violent films and computer games. The rationale of this study was based on evidence that exposure to such media presentations of violence can impact upon aggressive behavior. The study found that Acceptance of violence (from the MVQ) was the strongest predictor of violent media use. The authors concluded that the violent cognitions have an important role in behaviors such as violent media utilization. Despite the interesting results the use of this questionnaire has generated, studies completed using the MVQ have been conducted within a non-offender/non-clinical population so ‘‘the performance of the measure in clinical and forensic settings remains to be evaluated” (Walker, 2005). This 56-item questionnaire measures a number of cognitions (including: beliefs, rules, distortions and attributions) that are related to violence. Walker (2005) factor analyzed the questionnaire using a large ‘normal’ sample (n = 785, adolescents); 56 items remained loaded on two factors: (1) Machismo and (2) Acceptance of violence; these are the two scales included in the measure. Both scales were found to have adequate internal consistency (Machismo: Cronbach a = 0.91, Acceptance: Cronbach a = 0.76, Walker, 2005). The design of Maudsley Violence Questionnaire in different studies is made in reference literature on violence as well as clinical experience with offenders, but with the view of evaluation of the statistical performance of the questionnaire through analysis of the factors in the youth population. The results in the articles give strong support to the validity of the MVQ as being a useful measure which relates both to male and female violence, and further support the predictive power of psychoticism and social desirability for offending in general in males and females respectively. To ascertain the internal validity and reliability of the MVQ there was the computation of Cronbach alpha for its two factors, done for men and women separately. The internal reliability of the factors was high and the highest was noted among men using the machismo factor. It has been shown that rules, beliefs and attitudes that relate theoretically to aggression and violence can be measured and have a correlation with the self reported violent trait (Walker & Gudjonsson 2006). Analysis of the MVQ factors show that that the beliefs, rules and attitudes relate to violence among men and women and is made up of machismo and acceptance factors that are robust and reliable. Attitudes towards violence also can be divided into two factors, ‘culture of violence’ that shows similarity to legitimization of violent behaviors, and ‘reactive violence’ that has some similarity with machismo (Warnock-Parkes, Gudjonsson and Walker, 2008). References Gilligan, J. (1996). Violence: reflections on our deadliest epidemic. London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Walker, J. S. (2005). The Maudsley Violence Questionnaire: initial validation and reliability. Personality & Individual Differences, 38(1), 187-201. Walker, J. S., & Gudjonsson, G. H. (2006). The Maudsley Violence Questionnaire: Relationship to personality and self-reported offending. Personality & Individual Differences, 40(4), 795-806. Warnock-Parkes, E., Gudjonsson, G., & Walker, J. (2008). The relationship between the Maudsley Violence Questionnaire and official recordings of violence in mentally disordered offenders. Personality & Individual Differences, 44(4), 833-841. Read More