What Role Do Peers Play in Adolescent Dating? Insights From Adolescents With a History of Dating Violence

Digital Violence and Abuse: A Scoping Review of Adverse Experiences Within Adolescent Intimate Partner Relationships

International research in the past 2 decades has suggested that intimate partner violence among adolescents is a significant public health concern. Both are commonly understood as a pattern of behavior that is intended to establish and maintain control over a partner. Recently, a plethora of digital applications and social networking sites have presented new opportunities for adolescents to initiate, develop, and conduct intimate partner relationships. However, research exploring adverse experiences related to digital interactions in the context of adolescents' intimate partner relations is limited. This scoping review aims to identify and describe the nature and range of difficult experiences in the current published research relating to digital interactions between intimate adolescent partners, from digitalized violence to less severe adverse experiences. Systematic and manual searching resulted in the identification of 1,876 potential articles for inclusion in this review. A total of 18 articles were ultimately included based on the following predefined inclusion criteria. The article must: (a) be an empirical study that has used quantitative, qualitative, mixed, or review methods; (b) include young adolescents and adolescents of 18 years or younger as participants; (c) include accounts of young adolescents and young people's experiences and/or consequences of digital interactions within intimate partner relationships; and (d) be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Examples of less severe experiences could be different kinds of digital harassment, such as electronic intrusiveness, excessive texting, insults, unpleasant messages, and the spreading of rumors. Other adverse experiences related to digital interactions included being controlled by a partner, verbal abuse, experiences of aggression, sexual pressure, and coercion. Common consequences of adverse experiences included emotional and mental health-related difficulties, self-restricting behaviors, relationship difficulties, and risk behaviors.

Concerned friends of intimate partner violence survivors: results from the myPlan randomized controlled trial on college campuses

BACKGROUND

Nearly half of intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors experience their first abusive relationship at college age (18-24 years). Most often they disclose the violence to friends. Existing college campus "bystander" interventions training peers to safely intervene have been effective in sexual assault prevention; similar interventions have rarely been tested for IPV. Therefore, we evaluated the effectiveness of an interactive, personalized safety decision and planning tool, myPlan app, on decisional conflict, decisional preparedness, confidence in intervening, supportive safety behaviors, and IPV attitudes with concerned friends of abused college women.

METHODS

We recruited college students (age 18-24, N = 293) of any gender who had a female-identified friend who had recently experienced IPV ("concerned friends") from 41 Oregon and Maryland colleges/universities. Participants were randomized to myPlan (n = 147) or control (usual web-based resources; n = 146). Outcomes included decisional conflict, decisional preparedness, confidence to intervene, safety/support behaviors, and IPV attitudes.

RESULTS

At baseline, concerned friends described the abused person as a close/best friend (79.1%); 93.7% had tried at least one strategy to help. Most (89.2%) reported concerns their friend would be seriously hurt by the abuser; 22.7% reported extreme concern. Intervention participants had greater improvements in decisional conflict (specifically, understanding of their own values around the decision to intervene and help a friend) and decisional preparedness immediately after their first use of myPlan, and a significantly greater increase in confidence to talk with someone about their own relationship concerns at 12 months. At 12-month follow-up, both intervention and control groups reported increased confidence to intervene, and did not differ significantly in terms of percentage of safety/support strategies used, whether strategies were helpful, or IPV attitudes.

CONCLUSIONS

A technology-based intervention, myPlan, was effective in reducing one aspect of decisional conflict (improving clarity of values to intervene) and increasing decisional preparedness to support a friend in an unsafe relationship. Information on IPV and related safety strategies delivered through the myPlan app or usual web-based resources both increased confidence to intervene with a friend. College students in the myPlan group were more likely to talk with someone about concerns about their own relationship, demonstrating potential for IPV prevention or early intervention.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

Clinicaltrials.gov ID: NCT02236663, registration date 10/09/2014.

Weighing Risk Factors for Adolescent Victimization in the Context of Romantic Relationship Initiation

Research has paid little attention to the link between the characteristics of the relational context where adolescents are likely to initiate their romantic relationships and teen dating violence (TDV). Hence, the findings are still scattered. This study examined different risks in the female teenagers' relational context (peer group characteristics, participants' risky activities, and pressure to start dating) and their TDV victimization, which had not been previously studied in the Spanish population. The moderating role of parental monitoring strategies was also analyzed. Participants were 1,248 Spanish female teenagers who completed measures of the aforementioned factors. Highly victimized girls reported having more deviant and older male peers, receiving more pressure to start dating, and using more alcohol and drugs than participants with low victimization did. High parental monitoring was only effective to prevent TDV victimization in low-risk relational contexts. The findings extend prior research by providing evidence of the risk of pressure to start dating and low effectiveness of parental monitoring against high-risk peers. They also highlight the need to reduce specific risks of TDV in the adolescent relational context.

Who, When, How, and Why Bystanders Intervene in Physical and Psychological Teen Dating Violence

Teen dating violence victimization is associated with a host of adverse mental and physical health problems. A number of bystander-focused interventions have been developed to mitigate the occurrence of abuse but with varying effectiveness. There remains a need to understand more about bystander behaviors used by adolescents to ensure that existing intervention components match with bystanders' attitudes and behaviors about intervening. The current study is a scoping review of existing literature on adolescents' use of bystander behaviors to determine who, when, how, and why adolescents intervene. Seventeen articles met inclusion criteria, the majority of which used qualitative or observational survey designs. Adolescents who either feel a sense of responsibility and confidence to intervene or are directly involved with or know the individuals involved in the dating violence are more likely to intervene. Adolescents intervene when they are able to define an act as dating violence and tend to intervene when the victim is female and when they have a supportive relationship with at least one teacher in their school. The various ways how bystander intervention is engaged in ranges from verbally or physically confronting the abuser, distracting the abuser, seeking support from an adult, to passively accepting the abuse. Reasons why adolescents intervene include believing the abuse is wrong and that intervening will diffuse the situation and help the victim. A number of barriers to bystander intervention emerged from analysis including individual attitudes and school climate factors. Implications for strengthening bystander intervention programs are discussed.

Perpetration of Adolescent Dating Relationship Abuse: The Role of Conditional Tolerance for Violence and Friendship Factors

Research has pointed to the salience of friendships in predicting abuse in adolescent dating relationships. The current study investigates the perpetration of physical and sexual dating abuse as predicted by individual conditional tolerance for dating abuse within the context of friendship behaviors and group characteristics. Using two waves of the National Survey of Teen Relationships and Intimate Violence (STRiV; N = 511 daters aged 12-18 years), we investigated the effects of baseline individual tolerance for hitting dating partners and friendship factors on perpetration of physical and sexual adolescent dating abuse (ADA) approximately 1 year later. Conditional tolerance for hitting boyfriends was associated with ADA perpetration in the absence of friendship characteristics. Daters who reported recent discussion of a problem with friends and female daters who named all-girl friendship groups were more likely to report ADA perpetration. Close friendships are an avenue for preventing ADA perpetration. Furthermore, ADA perpetration may be reduced by targeting conditional tolerance for violence particularly against male partners within female friendship groups.