Resumo

MEDINA, Paula; ARACENA, Marcela  e  BILBAO, María de los Ángeles. Child Physical Abuse and Social Support: A Descriptive and Comparative Study Between Physical and Non Physical Abusers From the City of Temuco, Chile. Psykhe [online]. 2004, vol.13, n.1, pp. 175-189. ISSN 0718-2228.  doi: 10.4067/S0718-22282004000100014.

To carry out preventive and therapeutic interventions in abusive families, it is very important to consider the huge deficit of social support for these families. For this reason, the outcome of this research is the description and comparison of structural and functional aspects of abusive and non-abusive parent's social support. This investigation is a secondary analysis carried out with data taken from the FONDECYT 1960795, "Building up an instrument to detect potencial physical abuse". For the research a cases-control design is used including 325 subjects, 112 physical abusers and 213 non-physical abusers. The data analysis included a univariate analysis of variance and analysis of factorial variance. The functional aspects of the social support turn out to be more significant when comparing physical abusive parents and non-physical abusive parents. Main discoveries, implications, and limitations are discussed.