Surveying Intimate Partner Violence Myths Among Post-secondary Students

• Author / Creator

  Keyes, Nadia

• The purpose of this study is to extend the rape myth literature to intimate partner violence (IPV) myths by evaluating the prevalence of IPV myth acceptance and clarifying whether gender and prior IPV victimization are associated with IPV myth acceptance. To this end, three research questions were explored: 1) What is the prevalence of IPV myth acceptance amongst a student population? 2) Does gender correlate with IPV myth acceptance? 3) Do victims and non-victims of IPV accept IPV myths differently? University of Alberta students were contacted via posters and classroom presentations to participate in a 15-minute online survey containing a demographic survey, the Marlow-Crown Social Desirability Scale (MC-C; Reynolds, 1982), the Domestic Violence Myth Acceptance scale (DVMAS; Peters, 2003), and three subscales from the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2; Straus et al., 1996). Depending upon the criteria used to define acceptance, between 65% (neither agreeing nor disagreeing that “domestic violence rarely happens in my neighbourhood”) and 11% (strongly agreeing that “if a woman doesn’t like it she can leave”) of participants accepted at least one IPV myth. Consistent with expectations, men accepted IPV myths to a greater extent than women, and victims of IPV did not differ from non-victims in their acceptance of IPV myths.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Domestic violence
  • Domestic violence myths
  • Victimization
  • Intimate partner violence myth acceptance
  • Gender
  • Intimate partner violence myths
  • Intimate partner violence
  • Domestic violence myth acceptance
  • IPV
  • DVMA

• Graduation date

  Fall 2017

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Education

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3R78634W

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.