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.摘要：针对男性与女性实施暴力行为的相关研究仍存在争议。本研究旨在评估不同表现形式（躯体暴力、心理暴力、性胁迫及身体损伤）下婚姻暴力的发生方向。本研究为定量、探索性描述性横断面研究，共纳入304对年龄介于18至82岁的异性恋夫妇。研究采用社会人口学问卷与修订版冲突策略量表（CTS2），并使用SPSS 22.0统计软件对数据开展描述性分析。结果显示，超过70%的心理暴力以双向形式发生；若以单向形式出现，则更多由女性实施。躯体暴力与性胁迫若以单向形式发生，则更多由男性实施。就身体损伤而言，男性与女性的施暴占比相当。年龄较大的夫妇更易出现单向暴力，而年轻夫妇则更多存在双向暴力。上述研究数据可为婚姻暴力情境下公共政策的制定提供参考依据。