Attitudes toward Honor and Violence against Women for Honor in the Context of the Concept of Privacy: A Study of Students in the Faculty of Health Sciences

Abstract

The study was conducted to examine the attitudes of students of health sciences towards violence against women for honor within the context of the concept of privacy and to determine how the attitudes of midwifery students towards honor differ from those of other students. The research design chosen for this study is that of a survey. The subjects of the research consisted of students of health sciences (N=952), and the sample amounted to 473 students who were selected from this population by stratified random sampling method (departments and classes were taken as stratum criterion). A Student Information Form, the Attitudes towards Honor Scale (AHS), and the Attitudes towards Violence against Women for Protecting Honor Scale (AVWPHS) were used in the data collection. By considering that gender is an important confounding factor in attitudes towards honor, data were presented by dividing subjects into three groups: an all-female group from the midwifery department (MS, n=97), female students in other departments (FSOD, n=227), and male students in other departments (MSOD, n=148). It was observed that there was no difference between MS and FSOD scores for both AHS and AVWPHS. However, MSOD scores were statistically significantly higher than MS and FSOD scores. Although the attitudes of midwifery students in this respect are similar to those of female students in other departments of the faculty, they are different from the attitudes of male students.