Development of the Sahara Attitude Scale Towards Violence Against Women and Examination of Its Psychometric Characteristics

Background: Violence against women remains a critical global public health and human rights issue. Although several tools have been developed to assess attitudes toward violence against women, existing scales are often limited in scope, population coverage, or psychometric strength. Methods: This study addresses this gap by developing and validating the Sahara Attitude Scale Towards Violence Against Women for individuals aged 18 and above. The development process of the scale consisted of the following stages: content validity, construct validity, convergent and discriminant validity, reliability studies, validation of the obtained structure, and test-retest reliability. Data were collected through Google Forms from 360 individuals with different sociocultural backgrounds for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and 336 individuals for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results: As a result of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, a two-factor, 12-item structure was obtained. The scale explains 76.3% of the variance, with Cronbach’s α of 0.94, Gutman’s 0.95, and McDonald’s Omega ω of 0.96. The fit indices for the construct [χ2/df = 2.726, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.072, comparative fit indices (CFI) = 0.97, goodness-of-fit index (GFI) = 0.93, adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) = 0.90, and normed fit index (NFI) = 0.96] were found to be at an adequate level. The legitimization factor reflects individuals’ tendency to view actions such as violence, harassment, or mistreatment toward women as legitimate, understandable, or justified for various reasons. This factor consists of 1–6 items, explaining 63.2% of the variance, with Cronbach’s α of 0.94, Gutman’s 0.94, and McDonald’s Omega ω of 0.92. The control factor represents a perspective that considers it legitimate to restrict women’s freedom, establish control over them, and constantly monitor their actions. This factor consists of items 7–12 and explains 13.1% of the variance, with Cronbach’s α of 0.92, Gutman’s 0.91, and McDonald’s Omega ω of 0.94. Conclusions: The Sahara Attitude Scale Towards Violence Against Women is a 5-point Likert scale (0 = Strongly Disagree, 4 = Strongly Agree). There are no reverse-scored items in the scale. The total scale score is obtained by summing the scores of all items, and the raw score ranges from 0 to 48 points. The raw score must be standardized to a range of 0–100 points in accordance with the guidelines. Higher scale scores indicate stronger attitudes supporting violence against women.