Institutional betrayal reflects the failings of a trusted institution to prevent or respond appropriately to negative experiences. Following sexual assault, survivors who encounter institutional betrayal may experience greater distress and poorer functioning. The current study sought to assess the construct validity of the Institutional Betrayal Questionnaire, Version 2 (IBQ.2) and evaluate its factor structure. Survivors of sexual assault (N = 426) were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk and completed various questionnaires related to mental health, disclosure and assault characteristics, world beliefs, and rape myth adherence. The IBQ.2 demonstrated convergent validity with disclosure to formal support providers, assault severity, turning against reactions, and beliefs about self-control, and evidenced discriminant validity with disclosure timing, rape myth adherence, and beliefs about randomness and controllability of outcomes. Notably, the IBQ.2 was unrelated to measures of distress, including symptoms of stress, depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder, providing mixed evidence for the IBQ.2's construct validity. Confirmatory factor analyses failed to replicate the single-factor model of institutional betrayal found in a previous study, and, instead, suggested a two-factor structure of the IBQ.2 that delineates between the promotion of and response to sexual victimization. Post hoc analyses revealed that only one of the two factors (Response to Sexual Victimization) evidenced convergent and discriminant validity largely consistent with the single-factor model. The novelty of these relationships and factor structure of the IBQ.2 found in the current study warrants replication in future research.
Keywords: betrayal trauma; institutional betrayal; psychometrics; sexual assault; trauma.