The READI Scale

About

Welcome to the READI Scale. The READI Scale is a measure of your readiness to encounter individuals experiencing partner abuse in healthcare practice.

The scale was developed for all healthcare workers and students, though it can be used by anyone, including emergency workers and family violence specialists. So far, the psychometric properties have been tested with Australian healthcare students and the scale has shown good reliability and validity (see: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0886260520981131).

The scale is entirely online and can be accessed by anyone with any internet capable device, such as mobile phones, tablets or laptops. Simply click on the red “Take the READI Scale here” button above and you will be taken to an online version.

To view the Terms of Use for this tool please click here

If you wish to use the scale in research, we suggest you utilise the downloadable versions available below.

The scale is free to use, though we do ask that you acknowledge the creators and properly cite the scale if you are publishing research (citation pending).

Research

The READI Scale was designed to be used in two different ways in research:

1. to measure the readiness of a group of healthcare workers or students.
2. as a pre and post intervention scale to measure the impact of an educational intervention on a group of participants.

We have created online versions of the scale which you can download and use in your research. These are all free to use, there is no cost. The benefit of using one of the online versions we have created is that you can collect data without any printing or data encoding costs, it is all completely automated.

We do request that you acknowledge the authors and properly cite the scale in any publications. If you require assistance using this scale or wish to request co-authorship of research you can contact the lead researcher Dr Simon Sawyer at sisawyer@acu.edu.au.

Versions available for download
(note you will require access to relevant survey platforms to upload and utilise these files)

Qualtrics

The Readiness to encounter partner abuse patients scale (READI Scale) (PDF, 38KB)

The Readiness to encounter partner abuse patients scale (READI Scale) (DOCX, 20KB)

REDCAP (coming soon)

What does your score mean?

The READI Scale is an overall measure of your perceived readiness to encounter patients experiencing partner abuse. The concept of readiness is complex and there are several factors which can influence how ready a person feels to do this.

Our research with healthcare students has shown that there are four key factors that define readiness:

• self-efficacy – this scale is a measure of your confidence in your abilities
• emotional readiness – this scale is a measure of your comfort in discussing partner abuse with patients and responding to disclosures
• motivational readiness – this scale is a measure of your belief that responding to partner abuse is your role as a healthcare provider
• partner abuse knowledge – this scale is a measure of your understanding of the nature of partner abuse, your belief in common myths, and your understanding of how a patient may present to a healthcare service.

Your score in context
The overall scale and each subscale is scored between 1 – 7, and the higher your score the more ‘ready’ you are. A score of:

• 1 – 4.99 would indicate low readiness
• 5 – 5.99 would indicate medium readiness
• 6 – 7 would indicate high readiness; this is the ideal range.

When this scale was tested with a sample of Australian healthcare students we found the mean score was 4.99, indicating low readiness (see: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0886260520981136)

Improving your readiness

The best thing you can do to improve your readiness is to undertake training with experts. We recommend you finding a local agency that specialises in family violence training.

If your self-efficacy or emotional readiness is low, research shows the best thing you can do is undertake skills-based training which includes expert feedback. Learning how best to approach the subject of partner abuse with a patient and reacting to disclosures is a skill that must be learned. (see: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/medu.13108)

If your knowledge or motivational readiness is low, we recommend undertaking education which helps you understand the health impact of partner abuse. Living with violence or abuse can impact on a wide variety of health systems, and individual’s experiencing violence often feel comfortable disclosing to healthcare professionals. There are a number of things that healthcare practitioners can do to help support individual’s experiencing violence or abuse.