International Comparative Usability of the National Index of Interpersonal Destructiveness: A Validity Analysis

Human well-being is determined by a number of factors including quality of interpersonal relationships. The creation of the National Index of Interpersonal Destructiveness (NIID) was inspired by adverse impacts of violence on interpersonal relationships as research evidence on one hand and the 1996 World Health Assembly that emphasized the need for violence prevention on the other. The NIID is based on nationally representative subjective data of various sources (Integrated Database of World Values Survey and European Value Survey, WHO Online Mortality Database, World Bank Open Data, and the Standardized World Income Inequality Database), and national statistics of 62 societies around the world covering 21-year period from 1989 to 2010.

The paper introduces the NIID that is created as an internationally comparative index and addresses its internal (IVA) and external (EVA) validity analysis. By IVA, special attention is paid to how NIID is working in comparison of different societies while by EVA, we looked at the relations between NIID and different variables measuring interpersonal destructiveness that were excluded from the Index structure due to low availability of relevant data across the countries and the time points in focus.

The analysis demonstrates that interpersonal destructiveness of a society is related to attitudes towards interpersonal violence spread in this society and more specifically with the interpersonal destructiveness in schools. However there are a couple of outlier societies in terms of how the NIID is working. These societies are examined in more detail. It is concluded that the NIID has a potential as a valid instrument to provide a yardstick for evaluating and comparing the situation of societies worldwide.