Bystanders Responses in Cases of Violence Against Women: Categories and Gender Differences

Violence against women and girls (VAWGs) is a social and health problem of pandemic proportions. Prevention programs have become an increasingly important part of the strategies to address this violence and include effective approaches for this prevention such as bystander programs. In this sense, it is important to have reliable and validated measures of bystander behaviors. There are different tools designed for this purpose, some of which were designed specifically in a Spanish-speaking context. The main objective of this research is to deepen the analysis of the structure and the categories of bystander responses of the Questionnaire of Intention to Help in VAW Cases (QIHVC) that measures the willingness to perform these responses in three forms of VAWG (intimate partner violence against women, sexual harassment, and street sexual harassment). An opportunity sample of 1,563 Spanish people (M = 33.38 years, SD = 14.69; range: 18-77) took part in this study. The results obtained identify a three-component solution of bystander responses measured by the QIHVC: active helping responses, passive non-intervention responses, and hostile or revictimization responses. This structure is basically similar in men and women and for the different VAWG scenarios studied, except for the response involving confrontation with the aggressor. In fact, confronting the perpetrator generally appears as an active response to help in cases of VAWG only among men. These results indicate that the QIHVC constitutes a promising measure to evaluate bystander responses among the Spanish population in the three types of VAWG studied, with a structure of responses coherent with previous knowledge in the field and with a good, and, in some cases, excellent internal consistency.