Mika Hasegawa
University of Fukui, Japan
Title: University students’ Awareness of Intimate Partner Violence and Attitudes toward Love
Biography
Biography: Mika Hasegawa
Abstract
To clarify the relationship between the awareness of psychological violence committed by those in relationships with university students and students’ attitudes toward love.
A self-administered questionnaire survey was distrusted among 232 students at University Z in Japan. The survey contents included their awareness regarding psychological violence from romantic partners (10 items) and their attitudes toward love (24 items). Toward love scale is composed of six subscales: Eros (passionate and aesthetic love), Agape (altruistic love), Mania (manic and obsessive love), Storge (fraternal love), Ludus (fun and playful love), Pragma (practical love). The relationship between awareness of psychological violence and attitudes toward love was examined using Fisher’s exact test.
Of the 232 students, valid responses were obtained from 151 students, 90.1% were women and 9.9% were men, with a mean age of 20.3 years (SD 1.2).
Regarding the relationship between the awareness of violence committed by romantic partners and attitudes toward love, those students in the Agape group were found to have significantly higher rates of ‘not violent’ responses than those in other attitude groups for two items: ‘He/she shouts loudly and swears at me.’ (p =.026); ‘He/she threatens me by thrusting a knife or other objects toward me.’ (p =.008). The Mania group was also found to have a significantly higher rate of a ‘not violent’ response for ‘He/she threatens me by thrusting a knife or other objects toward me.’ (p =.024) in comparison with other attitudes groups.
The study findings clarified the relationships between attitudes toward love and awareness toward violence. It would be useful to carry out education programs firstly by providing students with opportunities to increase awareness of their own attitudes toward love, and based on this understanding of their own attitudes, help them to increase awareness toward potential violence committed by romantic partners.