Abuse in courtship among young college students in Bucaramanga and metropolitan área

Abstract

Abuse in relationships is a form of aggressive and negative action that aims to cause harm to the couple, and can occur from multiple dimensions (physical, psychological, emotional, sexual and economic). The main objective was to characterize the experiences of mistreatment present in the dating relationships of university students in Bucaramanga and its metropolitan area in a sample of 407 university students, linked to 26 professional careers in 7 public and private universities of the city (62.9% women and 37.1% men), with ages between 18 and 30 years. 91.6% reported having experienced, at least once, one of the types of abuse by their partner, evidencing that it is more frequent in women; however, no statistically significant difference was found in terms of gender, except for physical abuse. The age range where there was a greater presence of abuse was between 21 and 22 years. Likewise, the most frequent type of abuse was psychological, followed by emotional, physical, economic and, finally, sexual abuse.