2004, Number 6
Validación de las escalas de aceptación de la violencia y de los mitos de violación en estudiantes universitarios
Saldívar HG, Ramos LL, Saltijeral MMT
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Language: Spanish
References: 41
Page: 40-49
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ABSTRACT
Introduction
At the present time, in spite of the beginning of a new century, characterized by considerable advances in science and technology, our societies have not been able to solve many of the serious problems affecting the social relationships and the development of people. Among these, we can point out, for instance, the extreme poverty and violence in their different modalities.
Nowadays this seems an accepted form of social coexistence. For many inhabitants in the world, it has become part of daily life; and it seems that we have learned how to live with it, or rather, how to survive with it.
In our daily lives, there seems to be a violence acceptance and tolerance which appears to be strongly allowed by cultural values which consider it as a valid and even natural way to manage conflicts. These values can become standards that reinforce men’s domain over women, children and the elder. In addition, they may hold up the use of excessive force towards citizens on behalf of “governability” and the confrontation between groups with ideological, economic or political differences.
In this violence-tolerant context, there is a kind of violence which is aimed specifically at women due to the inequal relationship between men an women maintained by gender roles existing in our societies.
By socializing men and women as contraries, only one group holds up the power, thus generating the conditions and reproduction of violence that, in the case of women, frequently crosses the border of sexuality.
Sexual violence is a mostly masculine form of violence that works as a mechanism which limits and impedes the development of women in public settings.
The lack of information and the silence around this kind of violence contribute to keep it hidden and minimized, for what erroneous beliefs have been generated regarding their causes. This type of beliefs are known as “rape myths”, and they have been constituted mainly as a research line in the United States and Canada.
The objective of the present work is to show the construct's validity and the Acceptance of the Violence and Rape Myths scale’s reliability in a sample of university students. Method
An evaluative comparative, transversal, ex post facto study was carried out using an intentional non-probabilistic sample of 300 university students from three different departments, 40% of them where male and 60% female from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The instruments used where Velicer’s Violence Acceptance Scale (38) and the Scale of Acceptance of Myths of Violation built up taking as a base the eight original items of the scale of Burt (5) and 4 of the scale of Struckman-Johnson (32).
Results
The general measurements of the Violence Acceptance Scale reactives show an inclination to disagree with the use of violence as a way to solve conflicts but, at the same time, it shows a tendency to agree with “the use of military violence in international interventions” and with “the necessity of manufacturing weapons”.
In the case of the Rape Myth Acceptance, it was appreciated that the general means where slightly superior, with the higher ones displaying a propensity to agree with the statement “when a woman uses short or tight clothing, provokes harassment”. The factorial analysis came out with the following outputs: The Violence Acceptance Scale gave evidence for three factors (general alpha=.83). Factor 1 corresponding to the “family violence acceptance” dimension (α.89). Factor 2 “violent disciplinary strategies acceptance” (α=.71). Factor 3 “military violence acceptance” (α=.67).
The Rape Myth Scale came out with two factors (alpha general =.85). Factor 1 corresponding to “the woman’s culpability” dimension (α=.82).
Factor 2 corresponds to “invulnerability/culpability”. Invulnerability implies beliefs sustaining that raped women deserve such assaults if they have behaved “inappropriately”. Culpability justifies the reasons by which a man can not be raped and puts blame on men who are raped (α=.80).
In the other hand, the intra- and inter-correlation between the scales dimensions demonstrates a greater acceptance of the violent disciplinary strategies and a significant association with the acceptance of family violence.
The acceptance of family violence was the dimension more closely associated with a woman’s culpability and a man’s invulnerability beliefs. That is to say, that those who consider acceptable to beat their couple or child, have a tendency to blame women for their own rape and believe that men can not be raped at all.
The acceptance of violent disciplinary strategies is associated, in a lower level, with women’s culpability and men’s rape invulnerability.
Military violence acceptance nearly correlated with women’s culpability but it did not correlate at all with men’s vulnerability. Discussion
This is a study on a very common current issue, which is nevertheless relatively unknown in our country. Because of that, it is necessary to consider it as the beginning of an entire investigation line. This work has been made with a very specific and non-representative sample which prevents us from making generalizations. However, given the severity of the violence problem in our country, we consider that this first contribution could open new lines of research in terms of validation of instruments regarding the matter.
The Violence Acceptance Scale showed well-defined dimensions as the one for family violence acceptance. The violent disciplinary strategies dimension reflects a kind of education used throughout history.
The acceptance of military violence is evident as a form of institutional violence, which uses justification mechanisms that in many cases coerce some groups against others. The Rape Myth Scale obtained the first dimension, named “raped women’s culpability”. The second factor, “men’s rape invulnerability”, formed a dimension that reports a fake belief that man can not be raped.
It is appropriate to say that military violence obtained the highest acceptation mean; such outcomes reveal the need to make further research on this particular subject.
It is also necessary to do more exhaustive research on these topics, assuming that violence its not perceived as an isolated incident or set of practices, but rather as norms that are accepted or not depending on the context.
A change is urgent in order to stop violence becoming customary in our societies. To accomplish that, human and material resources need to be mobilized so that a campaign against all kinds of violence can be developed to transform such events into ones that would not be tolerated by any society or culture.
REFERENCES