Mass media exposure and attitude towards spousal violence in India

This study analyzes the correlates of attitude towards spousal violence using nationally representative data from India's National Family Health Survey of 2005-2006. Amongst the socio-economic correlates, the focus of the analysis is on exposure to mass media. The results show that the association between attitude towards spousal violence and regular exposure to mass media varies across different media forms. Regular exposure to newspaper or magazines is associated with lower likelihood of women and men justifying wife-beating. Regular exposure to radio has statistically weak association with the attitude of women and men, and has mixed qualitative evidence for men. Regular exposure to television, the most popular amongst the three forms of mass media, does not have any significant association with women's attitude, and has some undesirable results for men. These findings indicate the desirability of enhancing access to print media, which is a challenging objective due to the fact that substantive proportion of women and men have no education. These results also highlight a need for comparative analysis of the qualitative contents of different forms of mass media in India. (C) 2016 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.