Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2025
The 8-item Personal Safety Anxiety and Vigilance Scale (PSAVS; Calogero et al., 2019) assesses a person’s chronic and diffuse worry and concern about threats to their safety in relation to everyday experiences of sexual objectification and self-objectification. The PSAV construct is derived from objectification theory suggesting that personal safety represents an existential and embodied element of women’s lived experience that restricts their freedom. The PSAVS can be administered online and/or in-person to adolescents and adults who may experience gender-related and/or sexually focused violence. There is no cost associated with using the PSAVS. This chapter first discusses the development of the PSAVS and then provides evidence of its psychometrics. More specifically, the PSAVS has been found to have a unidimensional factor structure within exploratory and/or confirmatory factor analyses, and scores are variant (as expected due to power differential) between cis-gender women and men. Internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and incremental validity support the use of the PSAVS. Next, this chapter provides the PSAVS items in their entirety, its item response scale, and instructions for administration and scoring. Logistics of use, such as permissions, copyright, and contact information, are provided for readers.
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