The Impact of Disclosure of Intimate Partner Violence on Friends

Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects others as well as the survivor (Riger, Raja & Camacho, 2002), but we do not have measures to assess that impact. The Impact on Friends measure was developed to understand the impact of disclosure of sexual assault (SA) on friends of survivors (Ahrens & Campbell, 2000; Banyard et al., 2010). In this study, the Impact on Friends measure was modified to apply to IPV and administered to an online sample. Exploratory factor analysis revealed four factors: Emotional Distress, Validation, Confusion and IPV. The first three factors are similar to the scale for friends of SA survivors (Banyard et al., 2010); a fourth factor refers specifically to IPV. The Impact on Friends-IPV measure has adequate reliability. One of its factors, Emotional Distress, predicts increased depression and post-traumatic distress disorder symptoms of friends. These results suggest that although there is overlap in the experience of hearing about assault or impact of that for both friends of IPV and SA survivors, disclosure of IPV has an additional, unique impact on friends.