Investigation of the relationships among intimate partner violence attitudes, gender roles, dimensions of attachment, self-esteem and need for social approval in college students

The main purpose of the current research was to investigate the predictive role of gender roles, attachment styles, self-esteem and social approval in attitudes toward dating violence among college students. The participants of the study were 842 college students, who are studying at different faculties of Anadolu University. The instruments of the study were The Intimate Partner Violence Attitude Scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Gender Roles Attitudes Scale, Experience in Close Relationships Inventory-II, Social Confirmation Scale and Personal Information Form developed by the researcher was used to collect the data of the study. In order to analyze the data gathered from 727 participants, Independent-samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance, sequential hierarchical regression anlaysis were empolyed, and descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation coefficients were computed. Group comparisons showed that a viloence subscale scores are not differ regarding gender, however, there is difference between female and male students with regard to control dimension and total scores in favor of male students. To find out predictive role of gender role attitudes, attachment styles, self-esteem and social approval in attitudes toward dating violence among college students, sequential hierarchical regression anlaysis were used and the findings yielded that predictive role of all five dimensions of gender role attittudes in dating violence attitudes showed variance regarding the dimension of it. As avoidant attachment style is a significant predictor of violence dimension of dating violence, anxious attachment style significantly predicted abuse and control dimensions. Self-esteem is a predictor of control dimension, but not for abuse and violence dimensions.