Introduction

There isn't much information about the frequency and incidence of abuse for homosexual couples. However, the few studies that have been made to date indicate that violence is a problem that not only happens in heterosexual couples, and there are no standardized tools to measure the incidence of this issue. The Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2; Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, & Sugarman, 1996) is an instrument broadly used to measure abuse in heterosexual couples but there is hardly any data about its validity for homosexual couples.

Objectives

The goal of this research is to evaluate the structure factor and internal consistency of the CTS2 in 1475 gays men residents in Spain and 1697gays men residents in Argentina.

Design/Methodology

For the analysis of the reliability of the CTS2, the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was calculated and to analyze the structure factor we conducted a Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

Results

The confidence coefficients were satisfactory, both for victimization as well as for perpetration. On the total scale for perpetration (α= .82) and for victimization (α= .82), as well as on the scales of Negotiation (α= .81, α= .79), Psychological Aggression (α= .74, α= .77), Physical Aggression (α= .87, α= .86) and Harm (α= .83, α= .74) for perpetration and victimization respectively. On the scale of Sexual Aggressions the lowest reliability obtained was obtained (α= .58) and (α= .58). The confirmatory factor analysis showed that the CTS2 fits a five factor model, also evaluating the homosexual population, and the indexes of goodness-of-fit for the multifactorial model are also considered moderately satisfactory.

Conclusions

The results showed that this scale is adequate to assess psychological and physical aggression in homosexual couples both in Spain and Argentina.