Full Length Research Article UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF HAZING: A GENDER APPROACH *1 Suzana Nunes Caldeira, 1 Osvaldo Silva, 2 Maria Mendes, 2 Susana Botelho and 3 Maria José D. Martins 1 University of Azores, CICS.UAc/CICS.NOVA.UAc, Portugal 2 University of Azores, Portugal 3 Polythenic Institute of Portalegre, Portugal ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT The initiation rituals that freshmen are subjected to in universities have been characterized quite differently, although the most frequent view is that it is a rough experience for those coming to higher education for the first time. Gender has emerged as a differentiating variable of how students experience this practice. In this study, our interest is to find out the perceptions of university students over the events that take place during the entry to higher education through a comparative gender analysis. The sample included247 students of both genders. Data were collected by means of the scale ‘Evaluation of Bullying Situations in Higher Education Hazing’, which consists of 15 items and three factors: ‘positive relationship with hazing’, ‘negative relationship with hazing’ and ‘social dimension’. Findings indicate that, in the overall scale, there are significant differences between genders, with boys expressing a stronger agreement with the practice. In the analysis by dimension, this fact is reinforced, since in the ‘positive relationship with hazing’, boys exhibit significantly higher results than girls. In the distribution of variables in the two-dimensional space (CatPCA), we witness that, despite agreeing with hazing practices, boys display a very heterogeneous behavior, while girls more homogeneously disagree with them. Copyright©2016, Suzana Nunes Caldeira et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. INTRODUCTION The transition from secondary education to higher education connects two relatively distinct periods in a student’s career, since it requires the departure from one cycle of general studies and the integration into a new context more linked to the establishment of career goals. This transition is experienced by youngsters with happiness for having achieved a coveted goal, but also with anxiety for starting a new phase in their lives in a context that they still do not known and control. Some aspects associated with the entry to higher education can facilitate this transition and the students’ adaptation to the challenges of the new academic environment. In particular, relationships appear with some frequency in the literature on this topic (Abrantes, 2005; Agante, 2009; Leary and DeRosier, 2012), with peers playing a prominent role in relaying a welcoming message and in accepting the new element intothe academic culture. *Corresponding author: Suzana Nunes Caldeira, University of Azores, CICS.UAc/CICS.NOVA.UAc, Portugal It is within this understanding that hazing, which is traditionally called praxe in Portugal, is sometimes presented by veteran students (Vieira, 2013) as a means of socialising, so newcomers and veterans can interact with the aim of getting to know each other, establishing new friendships and guiding freshmen in academic activities (Schmalzer, 2013). Although we can recognise that, in many cases, there is a positive intention associated with hazing, the reports of several students subjected to it tend not to validate this favourable and humanitarian view of the events as the most common one. Often the alleged reception events are described as manifestations of power and abuse of veteran students over freshmen (Hoover and Milner, 1998; Mikell, 2014; Nirh, 2014) in which secrecy and silence characterise the dynamics that take place (Allan and Madden, 2008). Feeling some insecurity about their future in the new context and fearing social exclusion from peer groups or other forms of retaliation, newcomers tend to give up their personal identity (Tajfel, 1983; Tajfel and Turner, 1979) and to tolerate these abuses, subjecting themselves to different forms and degrees of violence (Allan and Madden, 2008; Hoover and Milner, ISSN: 2230-9926 International Journal of Development Research Vol. 06, Issue, 09, pp.9444-9449, September, 2016 International Journal of DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH Article History: Received 29 th June, 2016 Received in revised form 12 th July, 2016 Accepted 19 th August, 2016 Published online 30 th September, 2016 Available online at http://www.journalijdr.com Key Words: Hazing; Gender Violence; Socialisation practices.