Shen, A. C. T. (2014). Predicting the perceptions of dating violence among college students. International Family Violence and Child Victimization Research Conference. NH: Portsmouth. (2014/7/13-15).

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Dating violence in Taiwan remains a rarely discussed yet pervasive problem.  Compared to other nations’ physical dating violence prevalence among college students (Straus, 2007), Taiwan ranked number 6 (35.8%) among 32 countries (median = 29.8%), signaling the high prevalence of dating violence in Taiwan.  Despite of the high prevalence, not all college students are aware of or recognize all types of violence as violent behaviors among dating partners.  Therefore, this study aimed to examine the predictors of the perceptions of dating-violence victimization and perpetration among Taiwanese college students.  

Method: This study used self-reporting measures to collect data from a nationally stratified random sample of 666 college students (42.5% males) in 23 universities in Taiwan, with dating experiences.  The participation rate was 82.2%.  

Results: This study found that the prevalence of dating violence was about 60.5% (including victimization and perpetration experiences). The results reveal that among three types of dating violence (i.e. controlling behaviors, physical violence and sexual violence), the prevalence rate of controlling behavior victimization is the highest.  However, approximately half of the students with dating-violence victimization experiences did not perceive or recognize dating partners’ controlling behaviors as violent behaviors.  Moreover, gender, grades and peer influence can significantly predict the perceptions of dating violence.  Males and students with better grades had a greater degree of awareness of dating violence perpetration.  Moreover, if peers of college students are more supportive of dating violence, students will have a lower degree of awareness of dating violence victimization.  These research results have important implications in dating violence prevention and intervention among college students.

Keywords: dating violence, awareness, college students, Taiwan