FIRST-YEAR MEDICAL-STUDENTS KNOWLEDGE OF, ATTITUDES TOWARD, AND PERSONAL HISTORIES OF FAMILY VIOLENCE

Purpose. To assess first-year students' knowledge of, attitudes toward , and personal histories of family violence. Method. An anonymous, sel f-administered, 70-item questionnaire was developed and distributed in the first six months of medical school to 390 first-year students at three New England medical schools in 1991-92. The students were tested on knowledge and asked questions about their personal histories. Atti tude questions were scored on a five-point Likert scale. Attitude scal es were developed by dividing questions into three content groups (edu cation about family violence, the physician as advocate, acceptability of violent behaviors) and removing items for which inter item coeffic ients with all other items were less than .20. Two-tailed t-tests were performed on continuous variables and chi-square tests on categorical variables. Ninety-five percent CIs were calculated for point estimate s. Results. In all, 370 students (95%) responded. Of these, 139 (38%) reported personal histories of abuse. The mean knowledge score was 11. 3 (of 16 questions). One-third of the students answered more than 75% of these questions correctly; 12% answered less than half of the quest ions correctly. The women felt more strongly than the men about the ne ed for violence education (p < .001). The students who reported histor ies of abuse more strongly favored education (P < .05) and advocacy ro les (p <.001) for physicians. In addition, the students who had histor ies of family violence were more likely to report histories of suicida l thoughts (P < .0001). Conclusion. The students lacked knowledge but felt a need to learn more about family violence. Family violence curri cula should be better integrated into medical education. These curricu la should be sensitive to students' attitudes, given the reported high prevalence of personal histories of family violence among students.