Intimate partner violence is a complex phenomenon influenced by different factors as interactions between environmental conditions, personal characteristics, and interpersonal dynamics (Katerndahl, Burge, Ferrer, Becho & Wood, 2012). Most of the studies were focused at physical violence, however in the last decades has begun studied psychological and sexual violence in partners (Coker, Smith, McKeown & King, 2000; Rath, Jarratt & Leonardson, 1989). Some studies have found that psychological violence is a precursor to physical violence (O`Leary, 1999, Follingstad, Rutledge, Berg, Hause & Polek, 1990) demonstrating the importance of asses the emotional/psychological violence when we study partner violence.

Intimate partner violence is quite common in young married couples with about 30% or more of females in community samples who reporting that they were the victims of physical aggression from their husbands. Further, these females report that they engage in physical aggression less often or more often than their partners (O’Leary, Barling, Arias, Rosenbaum, Malone, & Tyree, 1989). Recent studies in healthcare settings have shown that women report lifetime abuse and physical abuse at 44 % and 34 % respectively (Thompson, Bonomi, Anderson, Reid, Dimer, Carrell & Rivara, 2006). Statistics show that about 8% of women report violence in their intimate partner each year in United States (Bornstein, 2006) and about 10,9% report abused sometime in their life in Spain (Spain, 2011).

Dating violence in college students is also a great problem as reflected prevalence rates of aggression. Makepeace (1981) conducted the first study on the nature and prevalence of dating violence. In his research 21,2% of the students had experienced at  least one personal  experience of courtship violence and 61,5% had known of someone who had been involved. In a more recent study Follingstad, Wright, Lloyd & Sebastian (1991) found 28% of female and 16% of male report physical dating victimization, while 12% of male and 20% of female report being abusive toward their partners, being the difference was significant in both aggression and victimization. Shook, Gerrity, Jurich & Segrisf, (2000) concluded that more females (23,%) than males (13%) were physically aggressive but they were not significantly different on verbal aggression scores (83% of females and 80% of males). The International Dating Violence Study (Straus, 2004) showed at the median 29% of the students had physically assaulted a dating partner in the previous 12 months along 31 Universities from Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. Male and female were similar in the prevalence who physically assaulted a partner (25% of men and 28% of women at the median university), even in rates to perpetration of severe assaults (9% of both male and female). While physical and psychological aggression rates are similar by men and by woman, for sexual assault women are overwhelmingly the victims.

In addition, dating violence in high and middle school is an important and prevalent problem that need of additional research and prevention efforts. Psychological aggression is most frequent, rates victimization reaching 94.5% of the males and 95.5% of the females, and perpetration 95,3% of males and 97% of females (Fernández-Fuertes & Fuertes, 2010). Prevalence of physical violence is also high as show Pradubmook-Sherer (2009) 41,9% of the males and 41,2% of the females had been physically abused. In addition, González y Santana (2001) found that 7,5% of boys and 7,1% of girls report have pushed or hit your partner, at least once, while Fernández-Fuertes & Fuertes (2010) showed that 16.1% of males and 30.2% of females admitted perpetrating physical aggression.

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