Child Maltreatment Impact Scale (CMIS)

Abstract

The Escala de Impacto del Matrato Infatil (EIMI), also known as the Child Maltreatment Impact Scale (CMIS), is a psychological instrument developed in 2023 by Colombo, Salcedo, and Alonso. Its primary function is to quantify the extent of the emotional impact experienced by health professionals and justice administrators (legal professionals) who are routinely exposed to the traumatic narratives of children and adolescents subjected to chronic intrafamily abuse.

The scale development process initiated with a comprehensive literature review, resulting in an initial pool of 44 items. Validation data were collected from mental health and justice personnel operating in vulnerable contexts across three Latin American nations: Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. Following an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), the instrument was refined to 38 items, structured across five distinct impact factors: Negative Emotions, Inaction Caused by Fear, Disbelief, Empathy, and Bewilderment. The study confirmed robust psychometric properties, particularly strong internal consistency.

Keywords

Child Abuse, Child Maltreatment, Disbelief, Emotional Impact, Empathy, Factorial Validity, Fear, Inaction Caused by Fear, Mental Health and Justice Professionals, Mental Health Personnel Measures, Negative Emotions, Trauma Measures, Bewilderment.

Authors

Colombo, Rosa Inés; Salcedo, Pablo Andrés; Alonso, Gisela Mariana.

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Purpose

The fundamental objective of the EIMI (CMIS) is to provide a standardized, formal assessment tool for measuring the psychological toll, or emotional impact, that exposure to narratives of chronic child abuse inflicts upon professional staff. This includes both mental health professionals providing care and justice administrators involved in legal proceedings.

By quantifying this impact, the scale aims to aid institutions in recognizing and mitigating secondary trauma or compassion fatigue among staff who work directly with vulnerable children and adolescents who have experienced severe trauma. The focus is specifically on the professional distress caused by hearing detailed accounts of abuse.

Construct

The instrument is specifically engineered to operationalize and measure the psychological construct of Child Maltreatment Impact. This construct encompasses the acute and chronic stress response in professionals resulting from exposure to details of severe abuse and neglect.

The core components measured are the immediate emotional impact and the subsequent psychological reactions (such as Disbelief, Fear, and Bewilderment) experienced when processing information related to child maltreatment and chronic child abuse.

Validity

The EIMI demonstrates evidence of factorial validity. The structural integrity of the scale was supported by the outcomes of the factor analysis conducted during the development phase. This indicates that the 38 items effectively group together into the hypothesized latent factors (e.g., Negative Emotions, Empathy).

The successful extraction of five distinct factors confirms the measure’s ability to capture separate, yet related, dimensions of the professional impact resulting from exposure to child trauma narratives, thereby supporting the scale’s structural validity.

Reliability

The scale exhibits strong indicators of test reliability, particularly high internal consistency. Across the five empirically identified factors, the calculated coefficients—both Cronbach’s alpha and Omega—were reported to fall within the robust range of .76 to .92.

These high reliability metrics suggest that the items within each factor are highly correlated and consistently measure the intended underlying dimension of impact, making the scale a dependable measure for its specific target population of professionals.

Factor Analysis

Scale refinement was achieved through an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) applied to the initial 44-item pool. This statistical procedure identified items that did not contribute meaningfully to the factor structure, leading to the elimination of six items that either displayed low factor loadings or failed to load onto any specific factor.

The final scale configuration is a 38-item structure defined by five distinct factors. This structure collectively accounted for 24.388% of the total common variance observed in the data gathered from the professional sample.

Instrument

Test Type: Original Inventory/Questionnaire.

Format: The instrument utilizes a 4-point Likert-type scale for its 38 items. Respondents are required to rate each item using one of four frequency options: “never,” “sometimes,” “almost always,” or “always.” Administration is typically conducted electronically.

Language Available: Spanish.

Population Group: Intended for the human population, including both males and females.

Age Group: Designed for use with adults across the full age spectrum: Adulthood (18 years and older), Young Adulthood (18-29 years), Thirties (30-39 years), Middle Age (40-64 years), and Aged (65 years and older).

Population Details: The development and validation sample consisted exclusively of Mental Health and Justice Professionals working in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile.

Test Methodology: The development involved rigorous assessments of Test Validity and Test Reliability, specifically employing methods of Internal Consistency, Factor Analysis, and Exploratory Factor Analysis.

Keywords

Bewilderment, Child Abuse, Child Maltreatment, Disbelief, Emotional Impact, Empathy, Factorial Validity, Fear, Inaction Caused by Fear, Mental Health and Justice Professionals, Mental Health Personnel, Negative Emotions, Trauma Measures.

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Authors

Colombo, Rosa Inés

• Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available

• Affiliation: Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)

• Affiliation Email addresses: No data is Available

• Correspondence Address: No data is Available

Salcedo, Pablo Andrés

• Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available

• Affiliation: Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)

• Affiliation Email addresses: No data is Available

• Correspondence Address: No data is Available

Alonso, Gisela Mariana (Corresponding Author)

• Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available

• Affiliation: Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)

• Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected]

• Correspondence Address: Cabrera 3962 piso 8 dpto. AT1, Ciudad de Buenos aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina, C1186AAX

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: To obtain permission for the use of the Escala de Impacto del Matrato Infatil, interested researchers or practitioners must contact the corresponding author, Gisela Mariana Alonso.

Fee: There is currently no fee associated with the use of this instrument, as it is classified as a non-commercial scale.

Test Year: 2023.

Reference’s

Colombo, R. I., Salcedo, P. A., & Alonso, G. M. (2023). Construcción y validación de la Escala de impacto del maltrato infantil (EIMI) [Construction and validation of the Child Maltreatment Impact Scale (CMIS)]. Acta Psiquiátrica y Psicológica de América Latina, 69(1), 15–24. The official DOI link is: https://doi.org/10.1177/17479541231188192

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Items of the Escala de Impacto del Matrato Infatil (EIMI, CMIS)

IMPORTANT: The full list of the 38 items for this scale is not available in this record. However, the items are published and can be found in the original source article, specifically on pages 21-22 of the referenced publication.