Attitudes Toward Women Inventory (AWI) in Dutch Violent Forensic Psychiatric Inpatients

Abstract

The Attitudes toward Women Inventory (AWI) was developed in a group of Dutch violent forensic psychiatric inpatients to assess antisocial attitudes toward women. The internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, and test-retest reliability of the instrument with 12 items were good. Negative attitudes toward women appeared to be negatively related to agreeableness and positively related to hostility and verbal aggression. A comparison with a non-clinical reference group yielded no difference in AWI total score, but the patients scored significantly higher on two sexual aggression items. Further studies on its psychometric properties in larger offender and non-clinical populations are needed.

KEYWORDS:

• forensic psychiatry
• attitudes toward women
• self-report measure