Webinar – Classifying the severity of violence against children in sport

Measuring the prevalence and classifying the seriousness of experiences with interpersonal violence in sport is challenging. Despite the increased attention and recognition of violence against (child) athletes, to date, there are no internationally validated measurement tools available. Also, self-report questionnaires used in previous studies do not distinguish between single experiences of mild forms and extreme, chronic exposure to violence. This problem is not unprecedented in the general childhood adversity research, where we find a wide variety of methodologies among instruments with often unsatisfying psychometric properties. This presentation sheds light on the current status quo and challenges of measuring and classifying experiences of interpersonal violence in sport and suggests some aspects to take into consideration when building a severity score. It concludes with a discussion on the feasibility of self-report measurement tools to quantify highly subjective experiences such as interpersonal violence.