| Summary: | The International Dating Violence Study (IDVS) was conducted by a consortium of researchers in 32 nations. It includes data on both perpetration and being a victim of violence. The data were obtained using questionnaires completed by university students in all major world regions. The term "violence" refers to maltreatment of a partner, including physical assault, injury as a result of assault by a partner, psychological aggression, and sexual coercion. The questionnaires, although completed by one person, include data on the behavior of both partners as reported by the student who completed questionnaire. The study questionnaire includes two scales, the Conflict Tactics Scales or CTS (Straus, 1996) to obtain data on violence between the respondent and his or her partner, and the Personal And Relationships Profile (PRP) to obtain data on 25 risk factors for partner violence and a scale to measure "socially desirable" response bias (Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, and Sugarman, 2010). Using the CTS, the respondents were queried about personal and social relationships. This included emotional attachments to partners, parents, and family. They were then asked about conflicts with and opinions of their partner. In addition, they were asked whether or not they attended religious services. Respondents were also queried about conflict with, and anger toward, their partners. Questions included whether the respondent could control his or her anger, how they coped with it, and if they assigned blame for becoming angry to their partner. Further questions focused on communication, including disagreements about relationships with others and with partners. Respondents were further asked if they experienced jealousy and exhibited controlling behavior toward their partner. They were then asked about their personal beliefs and attitudes toward others, including how they interact with people. Respondents were asked about their life satisfaction and emotional state, including whether they have had mood swings, as well as feelings of emptiness and/or depression. Suicidal thoughts or statements were also included in the questions. Respondents were queried about their experiences with fear of past events and whether those experiences still affected their life. Another focus of the CTS was violence and criminal behavior. Respondents were asked about whether they witnessed violence between others, including those within their own families. They were asked about violence they had experienced, their attitudes and beliefs toward violence, violent influences when growing up, and their personal past violent and/or criminal behavior. Another focus of the CTS was sexual abuse. Respondents were queried about sexual abuse experienced in their childhood as well as adulthood, whether that abuse was committed by a family member or within an adult relationship. They were then asked about their attitudes toward the opposite sex and opinions on sexual crime. Another topic included drugs and alcohol. Respondents were asked if they used drugs and alcohol, and whether their level of use was significant enough to endanger their health. The second major instrument in the study, the Personal and Relationships Profile (PRP), examined interpersonal interaction with the partner of the respondent. The scale included items the partner did to the respondent or the respondent did to their partner, as well as the frequency of those incidents over the past year. Items included physical violence such as throwing objects, pushing or shoving, use of weapons, slapping, burning or scalding, and other types of physical assault. Questions regarding verbal abuse were also included, such as name-calling, accusations, and threats. Other communication related questions were also included, such as compromising to reach a solution and respecting the other's opinion. Sexual abuse was another focus of the PRP. Respondents were asked if they used threats, coercion, or force to make their partner have sex, or if their partner did this to the respondent. The data is available in three parts. The first part, the Individual-level dataset, provides data for each respondent. The second part, the Nation-level dataset, was aggregated to create data files in which the cases are the 32 nations where IDVS data was gathered. The third part, the Gender-level dataset, divided respondents for analysis by sex.
|
|---|
