Abstract
Despite some positive outcomes of campaigns against sexual violence, rape is widespread in many countries. Many scholars have argued that rape myths – false beliefs about the victim and the perpetrator in rape cases – support the normalization of sexual assaults and result in victim blaming. Statistics show that Russian women suffer from various types of interpersonal violence, including rape, but there are limited instruments available to research the issue. Hence, this study aims to translate and validate the Illinois Rape Myths Acceptance Scale (IRMA) into Russian. For Study 1, the sample consisted of 914 Russian-speaking men (n = 482; Mage = 36.941, SDage = 10.096) and women (n = 431; Mage = 36.352, SDage = 11.007), living in Russia. We measured the structural validity of the scale using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses. The latter indicated a good fit of the short-form Russian IRMA (SF R-IRMA), particularly for a seven-factor model. For Study 2, a separate sample was collected (N = 565, 53.8% women; Mage = 37.31, SDage = 10.72), with a questionnaire including SF R-IRMA (21 items), Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, and Belief in Just World to examine convergent validity. Additionally, we performed Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA) to determine the invariance of measurements across four demographic groups. The results of both the correlation analysis and MGCFA support the validity and applicability of SF R-IRMA to various populations. The difference between the original eight-factor IRMA and SF R-IRMA is discussed in the context of cultural assumptions about rape as an event.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the Open Science Framework repository, https://osf.io/9uws8/. The data analysis code was uploaded to the same repository.
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Balezina, M., Zakharova, S. Measuring attitudes towards rape in Russia: translation and validation of the illinois rape myths acceptance scale. Curr Psychol 43, 4611–4621 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04666-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04666-2