Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is a serious health problem that affects pregnancy more
frequently than other obstetric complications usually evaluated in antenatal visits. We aimed to estimate the accuracy
of the Women Abuse Screening Tool-Short (WAST-Short) and the Abuse Assessment Screen (AAS) for the detection of
IPV during and before pregnancy. Methods: Consecutive eligible mothers in 21 public primary health antenatal
care centres in Andalusia (Spain) who received antenatal care and gave birth during January 2017–March 2019,
had IPV data gathered by trained midwives in the first and third pregnancy trimesters. The index tests were
WAST-Short (score range 0–2; cut-off 2) and AAS (score range 0–1; cut-off 1). The reference standard was World
Health Organization (WHO) IPV questionnaire. Area under receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC), sensitivity and specificity with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated for test performance to capture IPV during
and before pregnancy, and compared using paired samples analysis. Results: According to the reference standard,
9.5% (47/495) and 19.4% (111/571) women suffered IPV during and before pregnancy, respectively. For capturing IPV
during pregnancy in the third trimester, the WAST-Short (AUC 0.73, 95% CI 0.63, 0.81), performed better than AAS
(AUC 0.57, 95% CI 0.47, 0.66, P¼ 0.0001). For capturing IPV before pregnancy in the first trimester, there was no
significant difference between the WAST-Short (AUC 0.69, 95% CI 0.62, 0.74) and the AAS (AUC 0.69, 95% CI 0.62,
0.74, P¼ 0.99). Conclusions: The WAST-Short could be useful to screen IPV during pregnancy in antenatal visits.
