Palestinian physicians' misconceptions about and approval of wife abuse

The article presents the results of a study that examined Palestinian physicians' misconceptions about abused wives and abusive husbands and the extent to which Palestinian physicians approve of wife abuse. Self-administered questionnaires were completed by 396 physicians. The results revealed that between 10% and 49% of the Palestinian physicians held misconceptions about abused wives and between 15% and 63% held misconceptions about abusive husbands. The findings also revealed that substantial percentages of physicians tended to approve of moderate and severe violence against wives. Significant amounts of the variance in the physicians' approval of moderate and severe wife abuse can be attributed to their exposure to family violence and to their patriarchal ideology-variance over and above that which can be explained by the physicians' sociodemographic characteristics. The limitations of the study are discussed, as are the implications of the results for future research and theory development on the approaches of professionals toward wife abuse.