Domestic violence began to be discussed during the 1980s after the feminist movement. A New Civil Code was ratified in 2001 after the civil women's movement; however, women are still unable to incorporate the legal rights they have gained into daily life.

Ilkkaracan (2001) reported that in Eastern Turkey, more than half of the married women experienced physical (57.9%), emotional (56.6%) and verbal (76.7%) violence. Unfortunately, 51.9% of the married women stated that they had experienced sexual violence, marital rape. Ilkkaracan (1998) stated that only 1.2% of the women who experienced domestic violence notified the police and of those only 0.2% filed a complaint.

Gulcur (1999) found that 89% of the women reported one or more forms of psychological violence, 39% of them had experienced physical violence, 15.7% of them were forced to have sex and 5.2% of them had been threatened with economic restrictions. None of these women filed a legal complaint.

Sakalli (2001) investigated beliefs about wife beating among college students and found that male students favored patriarchy and approved wife beating more than female students.

The gender roles and the changes in immigrant families have been investigated by several researchers (Ayyub, 2000; Debiaggi, 1999; Joseph, 1992). However, none has focused on Turkish families and their perception about women and domestic violence. Thus, our purpose is to investigate the attitudes towards women and domestic violence by Turkish immigrants living in U.S. This study will be exploratory.

Method

Participants

Participant will be Turkish people living in the United States. They will be asked to complete an assessment protocol including demographic questionnaire, The Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS), and the Attitudes Towards Violence Scale (ATVS).

Instruments

Demographic Questionnaire. This authors-constructed questionnaire will include questions about participants' age, gender, educational level, marital status, reason of living outside Turkey, and the length of living in United States and the frequency of visits to Turkey.

The Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS). This instrument is developed by Spence and Helmrich, 1972. The 15-item assesses beliefs about responsibilities and rights for women versus those for men and ranges from liberal or non-traditional to traditional attitudes towards women. The alpha coefficient is reported as.89.

The Attitudes Towards Violence Scale (ATVS). This instrument is developed by.Anderson, Benjamin, Wood and Bonacci (2003). The 45-item scale has four subscales, which are Penal code violence, violence in war, corporal punishment of children, and intimate violence. ATVS is found to be a reliable and valid instrument to assess the favorableness of individuals' evaluations of violence in general.

Data Analysis

For this exploratory study, correlations between AWS and ATVS will be investigated. Furthermore, the relationship between AWS, ATVS and gender differences, length of stay and other demographic variables will be examined.