Purpose

The aim of the scale is to assess verbal abuse in the workplace, e.g., verbal mistreatment of nursing staff, and its physical and psychological consequences.

Scale Analysis

The Verbal Abuse Scale [VAS-79] was developed by Mandernio & Banton (1994). It is divided into 5 subscales and scored using a 5-point Likert scale. The original questionnaire consists of 79 items referring to how often an employee may be subjected to verbal abuse. There are various types of abuse — physical, verbal, or psychological — with the common element being the dominance of the perpetrator over the victim. This can include threats of or actual acts of violence, verbal mistreatment, and social exclusion.

Scoring and Statistical Analysis

The VAS-79 consists of 11 groups of closed and open-ended questions, forming a total of 79 items across 5 subscales. Responses are given using a 5-point Likert scale where 1 = less severe and infrequent to 5 = more severe and frequent. Higher scores indicate that the employee has experienced more frequent verbal abuse in the workplace, whereas lower scores indicate the opposite.

Validity and Reliability

The VAS-79 is a valid tool for detecting verbal abuse in the workplace. It was translated into Greek by Malliarou et al. (2015) so that both the original and translated versions are considered equivalent. The next step is to validate the tool for use in assessing verbal abuse in Greek hospitals. The questionnaire demonstrated high internal consistency, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.98.

References

Malliarou, M., Karathanasi, K., Sarafis, P., Koutelekos, I., Prezerakos, P., & Zyga, S. (2015). Translation into Greek of the Verbal Abuse Scale (VAS-GR). Perioperative Nursing, 4(2), 73–82.

Rikos, N., Telli, D., Hatzinikolaou, A., Mantikou, D., Rovithis, M., Fourmouzi, M., & Linardakis, M. (2022). Nurses’ exposure to verbal abuse at a university hospital in Crete, Greece. Nursing Practice Today, 9(1), X–X.