Affiliations: University of Massachusetts at Lowell, University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854, USA | Edith Nourse Rogers Hospital, Bedford, MA 01730, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author, 56 Dean Street, Belmont, MA 02178, USA.
Abstract: We had the nurses who were victims of actual assaults (n=29) use the ‘blame’ scales we have used in our last two written vignette studies to assign blame for their assault, and then we had three judges use the same scales to assign blame for the assault based on a written description of the assault by the victim. No significant difference in mean blame levels were found between victims and the average ratings for the three judges, or between victims, judges and the response levels obtained in our prior two studies. The mean ‘blame’ scores observed in written assault vignettes, therefore, are relatively and approximately the same as those that are, or will be observed in actual assaults.
