NCJ Number
152715
Journal
Criminology Australia Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Dated: (August 1994) Pages: 8-12
Date Published
1994
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This study examined the attitudes of a sample of Australian schoolchildren toward spouse abuse and attempted to relate the nature of peer relations in school with those attitudes.
Abstract
The sample consisted of 126 boys and 124 girls in a mixed- gender school and 105 girls attending a girls-only school; the subjects were between the ages of 12 and 18. Peer relations were assessed using a self-report questionnaire regarding the tendency of the children to bully others, to be victimized, or to act in a prosocial manner, while views on domestic violence were measured using a modified version of the Attitudes to Wife Abuse Scale. The findings of this study showed that support among school children for the use of physical abuse by husbands toward their wives was very high. About 40 percent of the boys believed that a man was justified in hitting his wife to resolve even relatively trivial disagreements. The results also indicated that those boys who were victimized at school were the most predisposed to believe that wife abuse is legitimate. 3 tables and 13 references