Perceptions of Dating Violence and Associated Correlates: A Study of College Women and Men

Informal Social Reactions to College Women’s Disclosure of Intimate Partner Violence

“…Seventh, our measurement of social reactions to IPV disclosure was based largely on a measure developed to assess social reactions to sexual assault, which has been previously used to examine IPV disclosure by other researchers (e.g., DePrince et al, 2013;Sullivan et al, 2010). Although there is overlap in social reactions to both IPV and sexual assault (Sylaska & Edwards, 2013;Ullman, 2010), there may also be important differences such as admonitions to leave the relationship (i.e., sexual assault victims may not be in a relationship with the perpetrator), or perceived seriousness of the abuse (e.g., physical abuse is perceived as more serious than sexual abuse; Edwards, Dardis, Kelly, & Gidycz, 2014). Thus, future work needs to be done to measure comprehensively and inclusively social reactions to IPV disclosure through continued measure development and refinement, including expanding upon current social reactions measures to examine global social reactions (i.e., did the victim receive predominantly positive or predominantly negative social reactions across supporters) and other reactions that might be more relevant to situations of partner violence that are not assessed by Ullman's (2000) measure (e.g., engagement with the perpetrator, expectations for future behavior).…”