DOMESTIC VIOLENCE BLAME ATTRIBUTIONS OF POLICE OFFICERS AND COLLEGE STUDENTS

This student explores domestic violence blame attributions of police officers and college students. A total of 387 college students from two institutions and 92 police officers were given the Domestic Violence Blame Attribution Scale (Petretic-Jackson et al., 1994). The results suggest that police officers and college students had significantly different ratings on the DVBS subscale scores, specifically that police officers had lower ratings of societal and perpetrator blame than college students. Continued exploration of the data showed that there were further differences within the samples. College students who had experienced domestic violence had different subscale scores than those that had not, notably that victims of domestic violence had higher ratings of situational blame. There also was a diffemnce between college students attending a public institution and those attending a private institution. Domestic violence training appears to correlate with lower victim blaming ratings for police officers. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.