Prevalence of Covert Violence in Intimate Partner Relationships. A Study with Spanish University Students

摘要

The use of psychological aggressive tactics in intimate relationships has become a critical target of research in the social sciences in recent years. The goal of the present study is to analyse the prevalence of covert violence in intimate partner relationships, in general and differentiated by gender, using micro sexist aggressions. The objective of this research was to compare differences within each status category (victim, perpetrator, and mutual). A second aim of the study was to explore the influence of the dominance in the cover violence. A total of 1889 youths, from 28 universities participated in the survey, 81.8% of which were female. The results indicate a high prevalence of covert violence in interpersonal relationships, revealing not important differences between the sexes. The mutual violence was the most frequent pattern in the global cover violence (66.7%). The lineal regression analyses reveal that dominance predicts multi-violence in young partners. These data provide an objective view of mutual violence in Spanish community samples and serve as a reference point for prevention and intervention programs.