NCJ Number
190144
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 7 Issue: 8 Dated: August 2001 Pages: 900-926
Date Published
August 2001
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This study examined wife-abuse attitudes among a sample of 507 Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Cambodian adults who were living in the United States.
Abstract
Short, self-administered questionnaires were distributed at five ethnic community fairs held in a northeastern urban area during the spring and summer of 1999. The ethnic community fairs provided access to large numbers of individuals of diverse Asian heritage (Chinese, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Korean, South Asian, and mixed Asian heritage). The Revised Attitudes Toward Wife Abuse Scale was used to measure attitudes toward wife abuse. Two categories of variables, hypothesized to influence attitudes toward wife abuse, were assessed: sociodemographic variables and childhood exposure to violence. The findings showed that 24 percent to 36 percent of the sample agreed that violence by a husband against a wife was justified in certain situations, such as a wife's sexual infidelity, her nagging, or her refusal to cook or clean. Southeast Asian respondents were more supportive of attitudes regarding male privilege and the use of violence in specific situations, compared with the East Asian respondents. Korean respondents showed relatively weak endorsements of spousal violence compared with the other three groups studied. One of the noteworthy findings of the study was the relatively high proportion of Asian adults who reported witnessing domestic violence and being hit as a child. An average of 27 percent of all adults had witnessed parental marital violence at least once as a child. It is possible that the marital-violence attitudes that these adults brought with them to the United States were shaped in part by the socioeconomic differences in their countries of origin; however, this was not tested in the study. 6 tables and 48 references