Directionality of Violence in Heterosexual Couples

Abstract There are still controversies between researches analyzing violence committed by men and women. The objective was to evaluate the directionality of conjugal violence in different manifestations (physical, psychological, sexual coercion and bodily injury). This is a quantitative, exploratory and descriptive, cross-sectional study, in which 304 heterosexual couples, aged between 18 and 82 years participated. It was applied a sociodemographic questionnaire and the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) and descriptive analyses of the data were performed using the SPSS 22.0 statistical program. The results indicated that more than 70% of psychological violence occurs in a bidirectional way and, when expressed in a unidirectional way, it is more committed by women. Physical violence and sexual coercion, when unidirectional, were more committed by men. As for bodily injuries, men and women scored equally. Older couples experienced more unidirectional violence, while younger couples had more bidirectional violence. These data can assist in the development of public policies in situations of conjugal violence.