Turkish Translation, Reliability, and Validity Study of Victim Gaslighting Questionnaire and Related Issues

Self-doubt imposed on the victim (gaslighting) is a manipulation technique and a form of psychological violence in which the perpetrator induces the victim to doubt their own mind and question their perception of reality to gain power and control, particularly in close relationships. Although instruments in the Turkish literature indirectly measure self-doubt imposed on the victim, no tool has been developed or adapted to assess this construct directly. This study aims to translate the Self-Doubt Imposed on Victim Scale into Turkish and to conduct validity and reliability studies. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed on data obtained from 200 volunteer participants, whereas confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on data collected from 280 participants. The internal consistency coefficient of the scale was .900, and item–total correlations ranged between .385 and .734. EFA revealed a two-factor structure with an eigenvalue above 1, explaining 54.34% of the variance after Direct Oblimin rotation. The first sub-dimension, consisting of 8 items, explained 44.22% of the variance (eigenvalue = 6.191), while the second sub-dimension, with 6 items, explained 10.11% of the variance (eigenvalue = 1.415). CFA results [χ²(73, N = 280) = 2142.5, p < .000, χ²/df = 1.95, GFI = .931, AGFI = .901, CFI = .957, RMSEA = .058] showed statistically significant standardized factor loadings ranging from .52 to .72 for the first factor and from .56 to .78 for the second factor. These results indicate that the scale demonstrates good fit indices.