Comparing wife abuse perceptions between Chinese police officers and social workers

Abstract

Seventy-one Chinese social workers and 74 Chinese police officers residing in Hong Kong were surveyed on their gender-role attitudes, endorsement of wife abuse myths, and definitions of wife abuse. Results showed that compared to social workers, police officers held more conservative gender-role attitudes, endorsed more myths about wife abuse, and adopted more restrictive definitions of physical and psychological wife abuse. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that definitions of wife abuse were related to different predictors for these two groups of professionals. Among social workers, egalitarian gender-role attitudes were a significant predictor of broad definitions of physical wife abuse, but no significant predictor was found for psychological wife abuse. Among police officers, significant predictors of definitions of physical wife abuse included marital status, educational attainment, and endorsement of wife abuse myths; gender-role attitudes were the only significant predictor of definitions of psychological wife abuse.