Assessing sexism and gender violence in a sample of Catalan university students: A validity study based on the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory and the Dating Violence Questionnaire

Violence against women was recognized as a public health problem by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1996, demonstrating that this enormous social problem has serious consequences for health and the health care system. This problem most frequently occurs in partner relationships (WHO, 1998) and, according to the Institut Catala de la Dona (Catalan Institute for Women, 2013) is occurring increasingly earlier in relationships. This study has three purposes. First, to confirm the psychometric properties (structure, dimensionality and measurement accuracy) of the Spanish version of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI; Exposito et al. 1998) and to assess the properties of the Dating Violence Questionnaire (CUVINO; Rodriguez-Franco et al. 2007) for use amongst adolescents in Catalonia. Second, to undertake a validity assessment study based on the scores on both questionnaires. Finally, to assess whether the variables of sex, socioeconomic status, and experience of abuse in childhood are related to sexist attitudes and gender violence in the target population. Analyses were based on a sample of 520 university students. The results confirmed the cross-cultural invariance of the ASI and the good psychometric properties of the CUVINO and indicated that the measures obtained in the Catalan sample were reasonably accurate and valid. The variables of sex, socioeconomic status and experience of abuse in childhood were related to levels in certain sub-domains of sexism and violence.