Genere violence prevention and collective efficacy in young woman from violent contexts

Abstract

An intervention program with women victims of gender violence is designed and addressed evaluating effects on social effectiveness by analyzing: perceptions, sensations and adverse behaviors that have an impact on their health and reduce their quality of life. Self-regulated group techniques were used. The sample consisted of 66 women, in the age range of 17 to 21 years, 33 women in the treatment group and 33 women in the control group. A workshop was designed to identify risk factors and promote coping strategies for proactive adaptation. For this effect, we worked with a quasi-experimental design using repeated measures, Ex ante (pretest)-intervention-Ex post (posttest), with a control group. It was carried out in a weekend mode for 11 weeks in a 6-hour workshop mode, a total of 66 hours. The intervention addressed pro-social strategies considering risk factors, endemic aspects of violence, among others, modulation of negative cognitive and behavioral processes and of physio-affective responses labeled to lead at risk to the evolution of individual pathologies that normally lead to depression processes, generalized anxiety, chronic stress and post trauma nature. The program exerted significant changes determined by the analysis of variance and of moderate to high effects demonstrated by Cohen’s d, the differences in pre and post-treatment means in pro-social aspects, in terms of risk factors, among others, in the Negative cognitive and behavioral processing and physio-affective responses that shaped traits of generalized anxiety, and post-traumatic stress in young women.