Assessing psychodramatic intervention on female victims of violence. The cross-cultural validation of CORE-OM and SAI-R for Project Empower Daphne

This paper reports on a research-intervention project named Empower that focuses on the problem of gender-based violence, particularly within the family and on the mother-daughter relationship. The verification of the theoretical model presented here, enables us to set the underlying assumptions for the six countries studied (Italy, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania) and make cross-cultural comparisons. Gender differences on test scores of spontaneity, psychological well-being and depression were assessed in six different countries: Italy, Austria, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. In our experimental design, we used three instruments, namely the SAI-R, the CORE-OM and the BDI-II to measure these indices in women and men. The BDI-II was only administered in Italy and Austria due to validation reasons. The analysis discusses internal reliability values, gender differences, correlations with instruments and comparisons between countries for each one of the instruments used and countries investigated. Internal reliability of the SAI-R, CORE-OM and BDI-II was good in every country and we observed statistically significant differences in scores obtained by women and men on the two tests. We also observed an inverse relationship between indices of spontaneity with depression and psychological distress in the participants.