Attitudes towards wife battering amongst South African police officers.

Abstract

The study aimed to assess the hypothetical conditions under which battery is justified by a sample of 225 police officers within the Gauteng area and to explore how these justifications were related to sex role attitude, The study employed a questionnaire design with the "Justification of Abuse Scale" used to measure justification, the "Attitude Towards Women Scale" used to measure sex role attitude and additional demographic questions posed to subjects. The results showed that the majority of police officers are opposed to the use of physical force by a husband towards his wife, but that a substantial minority accept that there are situations in which beatings are justified. Two distinct factors emerged from a factor analysis computed on the justification scale. These factors were termed Major provocation (Factor 1) and Minor provocation (Factor 2) Sex role attitude was found to be significantly related to justification, with police officers holding traditional attitudes being less opposed to the use of physical force and police officers holding egalitarian attitudes being more opposed to the use of physical force by a husband towards his wife. The demographic variables that were found to be related to justification beliefs were: age, language group, years of service, rank and level of education.