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The Usage of Mobile Apps to Fight Violence against Women: A Survey on a Sample of Female Students Belonging to an Italian University

The prevalence of violence against women continues to grow and this plague has had a huge impact from a clinical, social and judicial point of view. For this reason, alongside the efforts made at the legislative level to prevent the phenomenon and to improve assistance to victims in recent years, ef...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Tozzo, Pamela, Gabbin, Andrea, Politi, Caterina, Frigo, Anna Chiara, Caenazzo, Luciana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8297081/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34209846
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18136968
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author Tozzo, Pamela
Gabbin, Andrea
Politi, Caterina
Frigo, Anna Chiara
Caenazzo, Luciana
author_facet Tozzo, Pamela
Gabbin, Andrea
Politi, Caterina
Frigo, Anna Chiara
Caenazzo, Luciana
author_sort Tozzo, Pamela
collection PubMed
description The prevalence of violence against women continues to grow and this plague has had a huge impact from a clinical, social and judicial point of view. For this reason, alongside the efforts made at the legislative level to prevent the phenomenon and to improve assistance to victims in recent years, efforts to contain and better manage this phenomenon have also grown in the extra-legislative sphere: for example, through the application of new technological solutions and safety planning. In recent years, there has been an increase in the marketing of mobile phone apps dedicated to the prevention of violence against women, with different functions and different objectives. The purpose of this study is to investigate the knowledge and propensity to download this type of app in a group of 1782 Italian female university students. This research was performed using an online questionnaire administered to female students attending four different courses (law, medicine, healthcare professionals and political sciences) at one Italian university. Chi-square or Fisher’s exact test was used to analyze associations between responses to questionnaire and the type and the year of course. The results show that 62.6% of our sample are unaware of the existence of these apps and that 79.5% of the sample would be willing to download one in the future. With regard to whom to turn to after a violent incident, the majority of those interviewed (43.9%) would turn to the police and not to health facilities. According to our findings, law female students (52.7%) think, more than any other category, that the most effective way to improve public safety and reduce the number of victims lies in legislative solutions. Our results suggest that, although this type of technology may be promising, it is necessary to improve the knowledge and dissemination of these apps in order to make them a useful tool for prevention, education and assistance in cases of violence against women.
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spelling pubmed-82970812021-07-23 The Usage of Mobile Apps to Fight Violence against Women: A Survey on a Sample of Female Students Belonging to an Italian University Tozzo, Pamela Gabbin, Andrea Politi, Caterina Frigo, Anna Chiara Caenazzo, Luciana Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The prevalence of violence against women continues to grow and this plague has had a huge impact from a clinical, social and judicial point of view. For this reason, alongside the efforts made at the legislative level to prevent the phenomenon and to improve assistance to victims in recent years, efforts to contain and better manage this phenomenon have also grown in the extra-legislative sphere: for example, through the application of new technological solutions and safety planning. In recent years, there has been an increase in the marketing of mobile phone apps dedicated to the prevention of violence against women, with different functions and different objectives. The purpose of this study is to investigate the knowledge and propensity to download this type of app in a group of 1782 Italian female university students. This research was performed using an online questionnaire administered to female students attending four different courses (law, medicine, healthcare professionals and political sciences) at one Italian university. Chi-square or Fisher’s exact test was used to analyze associations between responses to questionnaire and the type and the year of course. The results show that 62.6% of our sample are unaware of the existence of these apps and that 79.5% of the sample would be willing to download one in the future. With regard to whom to turn to after a violent incident, the majority of those interviewed (43.9%) would turn to the police and not to health facilities. According to our findings, law female students (52.7%) think, more than any other category, that the most effective way to improve public safety and reduce the number of victims lies in legislative solutions. Our results suggest that, although this type of technology may be promising, it is necessary to improve the knowledge and dissemination of these apps in order to make them a useful tool for prevention, education and assistance in cases of violence against women. MDPI 2021-06-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8297081/ /pubmed/34209846 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18136968 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Tozzo, Pamela
Gabbin, Andrea
Politi, Caterina
Frigo, Anna Chiara
Caenazzo, Luciana
The Usage of Mobile Apps to Fight Violence against Women: A Survey on a Sample of Female Students Belonging to an Italian University
title The Usage of Mobile Apps to Fight Violence against Women: A Survey on a Sample of Female Students Belonging to an Italian University
title_full The Usage of Mobile Apps to Fight Violence against Women: A Survey on a Sample of Female Students Belonging to an Italian University
title_fullStr The Usage of Mobile Apps to Fight Violence against Women: A Survey on a Sample of Female Students Belonging to an Italian University
title_full_unstemmed The Usage of Mobile Apps to Fight Violence against Women: A Survey on a Sample of Female Students Belonging to an Italian University
title_short The Usage of Mobile Apps to Fight Violence against Women: A Survey on a Sample of Female Students Belonging to an Italian University
title_sort usage of mobile apps to fight violence against women: a survey on a sample of female students belonging to an italian university
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8297081/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34209846
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18136968
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