CONTENT ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC STIGMA ON INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN A SAMPLE OF SPANISH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

The aims were to: (a) Analyze public stigma in university students using content scales found in the literature, distinguishing between general negative attitudes towards IPVAW and those when asked about a known situation of violence, and (b) Determine the reliability of those scales. Keywords: Intimate partner violence; public stigma; belief; myth; content scale; university. According to the WHO Global Database, 27 % of women aged 15-49 worldwide who have had at least one intimate partner have been the object of IPVAW (Sardhina et al., 2022). According to Bosch-Fiol and Ferrer-Perez (2012), there are four main types of myth about IPVAW that stigmatize women survivors and impede progress in the fight against it: (a) marginality (associating violence only with certain social groups), (b) myths about batterers (focusing on exonerating perpetrator characteristics), (c) myths about battered women (blaming the victims for personal factors that make them easy targets for violence or because they consent to or ask for it), and (d) importance myths (minimizing or denying the existence of IPVAW).