A case-control study on dating violence among gay men in Guangzhou / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective: To understand the prevalence of dating violence experienced by gay men in Guangzhou. Methods: A self-report surveys were collected and analyzed from 510 gay men and 510 heterosexual males. Respondents were assessed with the self-made social demographic information questionnaire, Dating Violence Questionnaire (DVQ). DVQ included three parts which were five types of violence (controlling, emotional, security threatening, physical and sexual violence), whether they were threatened of disclosure of their sexual orientation to the public ("outing") and whether they had seek for help from other individuals or organizations after the violence as stated above. Results: The rate of reported at least one type of dating violence in gay men was 34.5％. Controlling for age, education, place of household registration etc., in logistic regression models, gay men were 5.08 times (95％ CI 3.54——7.29) more likely to report any type of dating violence comparing to male heterosexual males. And 12.6％ gay men experienced the threat of being outed. Among those gay men who experienced dating violence, 85.2％ of them did not seek any help from anyone or any organization. Conclusion: Overall, the prevalence of dating violence among gay men is higher than that of heterosexual males. It is necessary to have targeted interventions for dating violence among gay men.