Pshycological dating violence in young couples. Relation with other types of violence and quality of relationships

Over the last few decades, national and international studies about romantic relationships in young population have gained strength (Viejo, Monks, Sanchez & Ortega-Ruiz, 2016) both on a scientific approach and the social relevance for young people. Adolescents and young relationships, which are prior to the consolidation of the couple and outside marriage or cohabitation -known as dating- tend to be different from those held by adults in areas such as level of commitment, duration, sexual intimacy and the manner to solve conflicts (Furman & Wehner, 1997; Molidor & Tolman, 1998). Violence in dating relationships of young people are characterized for being moderate, bidirectional and reciprocal (Nocentini et al., 2011; Ortega & Sanchez, 2010; Viejo, 2014). Notwithstanding, there has been less research on psychological violence than on other types of maltreatment, like physical or sexual abuse. The majority of studies that include this or any other type of violence in dating relationships have considered it as a risk factor of violence in the adulthood or marital couples (Gormley & Lopez, 2010; Moreno- Manso et al., 2014). There is a wide range of instruments designed to measure psychological violence from a women maltreatment perspective in the adulthood. Nevertheless, most of these instruments have a gender bias -male violence against women-, considering only women or women victims of domestic violence perspectives. Besides, most of these instruments focus on the victimization of the questioned person, leaving aside the possibility that the victim might also be an aggressor, thus excluding an important factor: the bidirectional or reciprocal violence dynamic, which has been identified among adolescents and young people in numerous national and international studies. These studies have pointed out the reciprocal relationship between victimization and aggression in psychological dating violence (Fernández-González et al., 2013, Menesini et al., 2011 & Orpinas et al., 2012) that is the reason why more specific instruments of psychological violence were needed to study the bidirectionality in dating couples and to evaluate different types of behaviors and attitudes that can be subtle or overt. Also, in previous studies, it was found correlation among different types of violence such as cyberbullying and traditional bullying (Del Rey, Elipe & Ortega-Ruiz, 2012; Erdur-Baker, 2010) and associations among sexual harassment and dating violence (Miller, Williams, Cutbush, Gibbs, Clinton-Sherrod & Jones, 2013). Recently, a short term longitudinal study has also examined the association between bullying perpetration and later physical dating violence (Foshee, et al., 2016). Other studies have found positive relation between sexual harassment and dating violence (Miller et al., 2013) as well as relation between cyberdating and psychological violence (Borrajo, Gámez-Guadix, & Calvete 2015). Also, other studies showed similarities between cyberdating and cyberbullying (Álvarez, 2012) and the relation between cyber victimization and psychological violence, contributing to depressive symptomatology among university students of first year (Sargent, Krauss, Jouriles, & McDonald, 2016). Although it was found that dating violence tend to be bidirectional (Viejo, 2012), it has not been investigated the relation of the bidirectional psychological dating violence with physical violence, sexual harassment, cyberbullying, cyberdating and the quality of relationships. The objectives of this thesis are three, exposed in three different studies: 1) The development of a scale that measures the bidirectionality of psychological dating violence, with a dimension of victimization and aggression, the PDV-Q (Ureña, Romera, Casas, Viejo & Ortega-Ruiz, 2015). 2) To find out the frequencies of the psychological dating violence and the correlation between the victimization and aggression of psychological dating violence, sexual harassment, cyberbullying, and the quality of relationship in terms of expectations for the future, communication, companionship and conflict, as well as to find out how the variables gender, age, infidelity and length of relationship influence in the victimization and aggression of psychological dating violence measured with the PDV-Q. 3) To investigate the influencie of the psychological dating victimization and aggression with the variables of the second study, adding the variables cyberdating and physical violence