In line with the communicative methodology, that puts special emphasis on the scientific excellence that needs to be provided in research in order to contribute to social transformation, the first step to approach the study of gender violence at universities is through the review of scientific literature. Therefore, the most relevant literature has been reviewed and the gaps in literature could be identified. Once a broad picture of the research on gender violence in higher education institutions was drawn, a more focused search in the databases and the most cited journals in gender studies on the prevention of gender violence as well as scientific contributions on communicative acts for
prevention of gender violence has been conducted. Therewith, the issue of the present research could be confined and centered to represent an innovative contribution to this field of research. The literature review was then complemented by reading the most relevant theoretical contributions of the main authors in diverse disciplinary fields, such as sociology, linguistics, social psychology and public health in order to provide a solid theoretical framework for the research to be developed.
The scientific excellence of the present research is pursued by selecting only the most relevant contributions. Thus, the main data base that was consulted is Thompson and Reuter’s ISI Web of Knowledge. The results were then refined to identify only those articles that were published in the highest ranked scientific journals, such as Violence
Against Women, Sex Roles and Gender and Society (all three are among the first
quartile of the Journal Citation Report).
However, this search in the most relevant scientific literature has been complemented with the search in different data bases, such as Sociological Abstracts, SCOPUS and Psycoinfo, focusing on publications on gender studies and women’s issues. Access to these data bases was possible, because of the research stay that I had the opportunity to make during the months of March through June 2014 at the Harvard University. Through the library access I had the chance to consult the most relevant publications both in ISI Web of Knowledge as well as further data bases including publications from all over the world and publications that were not digitalized. Moreover, the research was carried out with the help of a librarian.
In this vein, the literature review was complemented with the scientific contributions that were also relevant for the purpose of this research although they had not been published in the main scientific journals. Examples of these cases are publications on breaking the silence on gender violence in universities in the diverse countries as well as dissertations on this issue. This exhaustive review of scientific literature outstanding in diverse terms, made it possible to gain a broad perspective on the current understanding of gender violence at universities across the world, its implications and the possibilities for preventing it.
The keywords that guided the search referred to gender violence, prevention, higher education institutions, and communicative acts. However, results were not that straight
forward and very diverse terms and combinations have been used. The main keywords referring to each of these fields are listed in the Table 2.
Table 2: Keywords used in the search for the scientific literature
The search for the most relevant scientific literature was complemented with the review and study of the most important theoretical contributions of authors from different fields of research. In this vein, the present research stands on the shoulders of the giants (Merton, 1965) as it builds on the theories of Jürgen Habermas, considered as the most important contemporary author in sociology; George Herbert Mead (1934), considered as one of the founders of the field of Social Psychology; John Longshaw Austin (1962), who is renowned for his contribution to linguistics; Jesus Gomez (2015), regarded as one of the initiators of the revolution of the 21st century with his contributions on love and preventive socialization of gender violence; and Rima Rudd who made a ground- breaking contribution to public health with her approach of health literacy (Rudd et al., 2004), to mention only some of the authors that have been consulted.
The study of all these fundamental contributions to social theory ensure the scientific foundation of the present research and make it possible to shed light on verbal and non- verbal communicative acts that can help to prevent gender violence at Spanish universities. The giants were not only consulted in relation to the theoretical framework but also regarding the methods to be used in the present research. In this regard, Jesus
Gender violence Higher Education Prevention Communicative Acts
sexual violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment universities violence prevention speech acts violence against women
college / campus prevention strategies / preventive socialization body language gender / women / female + harassment / power abuse / discrimination
students / faculty bystander / activism
Gomez and Ramon Flecha can be considered as the fathers of the Communicative Methodology that is praised for its contribution to social transformation as well as for the high scientific standard set forth.
A third source for scientific information for the present study is the CREA Research Center in Theories and Practices to overcome Social Inequalities. The work developed by the academics and professionals belonging to this research center has been available for the purpose of this dissertation. In this regard, I had access to the research results of all the relevant research projects developed on gender violence prevention as well as those projects conducted on communicative acts. Moreover, the present research is embedded in the work developed at CREA and thus counts on the scientific contributions of the previous research but also on the academic excellence for the counseling to conduct the present study.