Intimate partner violence: Prevalence and associated factors

• Published in: Contextos clínicos Vol. 8; no. 1; p. 55
• Main Authors: Colossi, Patrícia Manozzo, Razera, Josiane, Haack, Karla Rafaela, Falcke, Denise
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: São Leopoldo Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - UNISINOS, Editoria de Periódicos Científicos 01.01.2015
• Subjects: Domestic violence; Marriage; Qualitative research; Studies
• ISSN: 1983-3482

Marital violence is a very important topic in different contexts, given its high prevalence worldwide. The aim of the present quantitative study was to describe violent marital relationships and analyze correlations with sociodemographic variables. 186 couples (N=372) participated in this study. All couples reside in the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre (RS), are officially married or live together. Snowball sampling was used to select the subjects. A sociodemographic questionnaire was used to collect data, as well as the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS-2), to identify the different expressions of violence within the marital relationship. For data analysis all information was entered in the SPSS program (20.0) and descriptive statistics was performed in order to check variables. Among the most important results, male sexual coercion stands out at 2.74%, with psychological violence practiced at 86.59% by women. The results obtained corroborate previous studies which showed men using predominantly sexual violence and women using predominantly psychological violence. This study highlights a higher prevalence of violence among young couples, with a low level of religiosity and low income couples, and who live together but are not officially married. It is concluded that violence is a complex phenomenon which requires att ention from health professionals.