Psychometric Evaluation of the Motivators and Resources for Trauma Recovery (I- MOVE) Scale Among Gender-Based Violence Survivors

Abstract Gender-based violence (GBV) is a pervasive public health issue with profound psychological, relational, and structural consequences. While survivors draw upon internal resources, external resources, internal motivators, and external motivators throughout the healing process, existing instruments typically assess these constructs independently rather than within a unified, survivor-centered framework. The Motivators and Resources for Trauma Recovery (I-MOVE) Scale was developed to address this gap through a strengths-based assessment of recovery facilitators among women survivors of GBV. The four theory and survivor informed domains guided development of the initial item pool but were not proposed as an empirically established factor structure. This cross-sectional psychometric evaluation included 526 US based women with lived experiences of GBV who completed the I-MOVE Scale and established measures of meaning-making, coping self-efficacy, healing, trauma-related cognitions, normalization of violence, barriers to help-seeking, depressive symptoms, and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Participants were stratified by past 12 month GBV exposure and randomly divided into exploratory factor analysis (EFA; n = 263) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; n = 263) groups. Exploratory factor analysis identified an emergent five-factor structure comprising Self-Driven Recovery, Access to Supportive Resources, Self-Awareness and Growth, Social Awareness and Empowerment, and Turning Points Toward Healing. Confirmatory factor analysis produced mixed structural validity evidence: RMSEA (0.045) and CMIN/DF (1.53) met the prespecified reference criteria, whereas CFI (0.809) and TLI (0.796) did not. Internal consistency was good for the overall scale (α = 0.89) and ranged from 0.61 to 0.83 across subscales. Modest positive associations with meaning-making, coping self-efficacy, and healing provided preliminary convergent validity evidence. Associations with trauma-related cognitions and normalization of violence were nonsignificant, while barriers to help-seeking were unexpectedly positively associated with I-MOVE scores. Participants with elevated depressive symptoms or elevated PTSS reported significantly lower I-MOVE scores. The findings provide preliminary evidence regarding the internal consistency and construct validity of I-MOVE Scale as a multidimensional, survivor-centered assessment of trauma recovery facilitators. Further independent evaluation of its factor structure, score stability, measurement invariance, and responsiveness to change is needed before broader research and clinical implementation.