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Community Context and Men's Control-Seeking in Intimate Relationships
1College of Social Work, University of South Carolina, USA.
Abstract:
This study explores social-ecological influences on men's control-seeking in intimate relationships with women. Desire for control is central to the battered women's movement and is incorporated into intimate partner violence (IPV) prevention work. Recent IPV scholarship re-focuses on control, but the role of community contexts is underdeveloped. Community contexts have been associated with men's risk for IPV and evidence supports that social ecology facilitates IPV against women. Given the importance of the social ecology to control in IPV, this study examines community contexts that influence men's control-seeking of women partners. The sample comprised 2,342 in-state, male undergraduate students who completed a cross-sectional survey at a public university. Hypotheses were tested using hierarchical linear modeling. Results support a connection between county contexts and men's control-seeking toward women partners. Implications for IPV research and practice are discussed.
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