Global Journal of Human Social Science, C: Sociology and Culture, Volume 22 Issue 6

adulthood, comprises between 18-19 years to 25-29 years of age, and is a stage in which people establish who they are or who they want to be (Craig, 2009). At this stage people are no longer teenagers, but at the same time they are not yet fulfilling adult roles as such, and although uncertainty and confusion are present causing distress, for the most part, people going through this stage have a positive outlook on their future and adult life (Craig, 2009). It could be said that there is an intellectual discovery and personal growth at the time of college, and that it is also a special and distinct time in life, and also brings a number of benefits in the short and long term and that it is more important the fact of attending a university (whatever it may be), than what kind of university is attended or what career is studied, since different research concludes that the university itself plays a fundamental role in the way people think and perceive the world, promotes reflection and flexibility of thought. It is at this stage that couples represent the most important relationship in people's lives, and that they try to find their ideal of love, seek to establish themselves, have more serious relationships, formalize them, move towards marriage and also to the establishment of a family (Craig, 2009). III. M ethod The approach of this research was qualitative, since it sought to analyze romantic love and VAW through the dialogue between people's thoughts, beliefs and feelings, by describing, understanding and explaining the phenomenon in question, focusing on understanding and deepening understanding, seeking primarily to understand the participants' perspective. Taking into account that in this approach, the studies are constructed and reconstructed continuously and are based on what the participants contribute and the new information that emerges (Balcazar et al. 2015). It should also be noted that in this research, the "methodological complementarity" proposed by Blanco and Pirelli (2016) was used, which corresponds to a strategy that integrates techniques or instruments that come from different approaches (as in the case of the focus groups and the form with the scale of myths about love) so that they can be analyzed from a single approach, in this case the qualitative approach, demonstrating that both approaches (qualitative and quantitative) can be in fact complementary. The research was of a descriptive exploratory type and used two types of participants, the participants of the focus groups, whose contribution was the main one for the research, and with the people who filled out the questionnaire composed of the scale of myths about love complemented with 3 open questions, whose information and contribution was meant to complement and support the data obtained in the focus groups. Theoretical sampling was used, with a number of participants that leads to theoretical saturation in the case of the focus groups and was non-probabilistic and intentional (Deslauriers, 2004). The sample was chain or network sampling, also called "snowball" (Flick, 2007). Among the strategies used were focus groups, which had the purpose of bringing people together to share beliefs, ideas and feelings about romantic love and VAW, to provide information relevant to the research and also products, another strategy was the reduced version of the scale of myths about love created by Bosch in 2009 and validated in Colombia and Mexico (see table 1), which consists of 7 items and 2 dimensions, the first dimension being the idealization of love (items 1, 2, 3, 6 and 10) and the second dimension the love-abuse linkage (items 8 and 9) which has a Likert-type response format from 1 to 5, ranging from completely disagree to completely agree, with an Alpha of 0. 69 in the dimension of idealization of love and 0.77 in the dimension of love-abuse bonding. Table 1: Dimension and items of the love myths scale. Dimensions Dimension of idealization of love Dimension of the love-abuse linkage 1. Somewhere out there, there is someone predestined for each person (better half). 2. The passion of the early days of a relationship should last forever. 3. True love can do anything. 6. Jealousy is a test of love. 10. Love is blind. 8. You can love someone that you mistreat. 9. You can mistreat someone you love. Source: Own elaboration Both strategies were validated by different experts, and a matrix of categories was created with A priori categories (general, primary and secondary categories) and emerging categories (sub-categories, indicators, and the construction based on the theoretical framework and the discourse of the research participants, which emerge from their relationship with the a priori categories). IV. R esults The results of the research were organized according to the research question and its objectives; Volume XXII Issue VI Version I 12 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 © 2022 Global Journals C Romantic Love and Violence against Women from a Gender Approach Items