Washington, May 9 (ANI): India is among the top 10 countries that have highest levels of social stress, which has a direct link to increased dating violence, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire.

The research led by Murray Straus, co-director of the UNH Family Research Laboratory and professor of sociology, is based on a 32-nation study.

It shows that Taiwan has the highest level of social stress.

While making a presentation on the study at the conference on “War, Terrorism, and Social Stress: Impacts on Crime and the Criminal Justice System” at the Institute of Criminology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, recently, Straus said: “The current economic stress in the United States and around the world is likely to result in more violence, including more physical abuse of children and more violence between partners.”

Studying 14,252 university students from 68 universities in 32 nations in a comprehensive and groundbreaking International Dating Violence Study, he found that the more stress experienced by these students, the greater the probability they had hit a dating, cohabiting, or marital partner.

According to his study, Taiwan has the highest levels of social stress, followed by South Korea and China. The United States ranked 12th out of the 32 nations studied for social stress.

The Netherlands was found to have the lowest levels of social stress.

When looking at rates of assault, Iran had the highest overall assault rate and Taiwan had the highest rate of severe assaults.

Top 10 countries with the highest stressful conditions are:

1. Taiwan2. South Korea3. China4. Russia5. Tanzania6. South Africa7. Hong Kong8. Japan9. Lithuania10. India (ANI)