Measuring Technology Facilitated Intimate Partner Violence In Informal Settlements: Psychometric Validation of a 5-Item Scale In Nairobi

Background and Purpose: Technology Facilitated Intimate Partner Violence (TF-IPV) is an important extension of coercive control in urban informal settlements, where IPV is highly prevalent and shaped by dense living conditions, constrained privacy, precarious livelihoods, and limited access to protection and services. In these settings, phones can be weaponized by abusive partners through surveillance, unauthorized account access, and financial interference. Yet TF-IPV remains under-measured. Most existing tools are developed for high-income contexts and are often too long for routine research and safety work in resource-constrained urban settings. We evaluated a brief scale to strengthen TF-IPV measurement in informal settlements.

Methods: We conducted psychometric validation using baseline survey data from 260 female IPV survivors in Kibera and Mathare, two of Nairobi’s densest informal settlements. The scale captures five TF-IPV behaviors across three recall periods: lifetime, past 12 months, and past 3 months, with a frequency indicator. We assessed prevalence, dimensionality using tetrachoric correlations, parallel analysis, and EFA, and evaluated internal consistency using KR-20. We also examined item performance and test information using a two-parameter item response theory model, and assessed convergent validity using Spearman correlations with partner controlling behaviors, economic abuse, and sexual abuse subscales.

Results: Lifetime prevalence of TF-IPV behaviors ranged from 29.2% to 77.8%, with surveillance of calls and messages being most common (77.8%) and non-consensual location tracking least common (29.2%). Exploratory factor analysis of the tetrachoric correlation matrix supported a unidimensional structure, with the first factor explaining 60.3% of the common variance and item loadings ranging from 0.70 to 0.87. Internal consistency was acceptable (KR-20 = 0.73, 95% CI [0.68, 0.78]), and removing any item reduced reliability. In a 2-parameter logistic IRT model, all items showed strong discrimination (a = 1.69 to 3.09) and acceptable fit. Convergent validity was supported by significant positive correlations with psychological control (rs = .545), physical IPV (rs = .262), sexual IPV (rs = .282), and economic IPV (rs = .581), with the strongest associations observed for economic IPV and psychological control.

Conclusions and Implications: This validated, low-burden measure supports the routine inclusion of TF-IPV in surveys, trials, and program monitoring in resource-constrained informal settlements. With adaptation, the tool has potential relevance for other low- and middle- income urban informal contexts.