Digital Violence in Affective-Sexual Relationships among Spanish University Students

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have brought about new forms of contact and interpersonal relationships, as well as a new space in which to deploy digital violence in the form of abuse, harassment, intimidation and behaviours of control and coercion through electronic media. This research analyses whether ICTs are the cause of a new form of digital violence and studies the prevalence of this digital violence exercised through screens among university couples. Applying a quantitative methodology, a two-stage random cluster sampling of 528 (MAge = 24.29; SD = 21.41; 69.5 % female) Spanish university students was carried out. As a research instrument, we used the Digital Violence Questionnaire (DVQ), created for the detection, measurement and analysis of digital violence within affective-sexual relationships, which is composed of seven factors and a total of 55 variables presented in 30 items. The main results by factors were: