Background: The Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAPI) is a screening tool, for assessing a parent’s potential towards child physical abuse. It was originally developed in English (Milner, 1986) and later translated to many different languages (Milner and Crouch 2012) but never in Arabic. This thesis aims at producing an Arabic version of the CAPI and assessing its psychometric properties, reliability and validity among a population of pregnant women in Oman. Methods: Following the development of an Arabic version, the CAPI was administered twice to a population of pregnant women (N= 309) attending Ante Natal Care Clinics in Muscat. A sub-sample of 10 mothers was later interviewed to explore their views and the acceptance of the tool in Oman. Results: The mean score of the Abuse Scale was 159.6 (range 26-390) which was higher than the American version (mean = 91) but similar to other cross-cultural versions. Internal consistency (Cronbach’s α= 0.91) and test-retest reliability (Pearson’s r= 0.89; two-tailed P 0.00) were both high. Regarding construct validity, the six-factor structure of the original version was not replicated; only three factors were obtained. The conservative cutoff score for the upper 5% of the parent sample was 303, which was higher than the cut-off score of 215 in the original US version. From the interviews, mothers reported that the CAPI was easy to complete and appropriate for use in Oman Conclusions: The Arabic version of the CAPI showed highly satisfactory internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The construct correspondence with the original version was more compromised. This suggests that the Arabic version of the CAPI is a valid and reliable tool to use to assess potential towards child physical abuse within Oman, but with different cutoff scores. These results are in concordance with other cross-cultural versions of the CAPI. Further research is needed to validate an Arabic version of the CAPI in relation to actual parenting outcomes.

Background: The Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAPI) is a screening tool, for assessing a parent’s potential towards child physical abuse. It was originally developed in English (Milner, 1986) and later translated to many different languages (Milner and Crouch 2012) but never in Arabic. This t...