The purpose of this study was to identify high school students’ actions in response to physical aggression in their dating relationships. The association of these actions with race/ethnicity and gender was also examined. From a sample of high school students (N = 476), a subsample who reported that they had experienced at least one episode of being victimized by physical aggression in a dating relationship (n = 183), served as the sample of interest. On average, students engaged in two help-seeking actions, with females reporting more actions than males. Overall, the most common responses to physical aggression in a dating relationship were aggressive action (e.g., fight back), informal help seeking, threatened or actual breakup, and doing nothing (males) or crying (females). Females were more likely to fight back than were males. Race was largely unrelated to students’ actions. Intervention opportunities and areas for future research are discussed.
This study explored the factor structure of a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS; M. A. Straus, 1979) in a large multiethnic high school sample. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic approaches were used. Results generally supported 2-factor models for males and females. A substantial proportion of residual variance remained after the 2 primary factors were extracted, and correlations among this residual variance suggested meaningful differences in the perpetration and experience of dating violence for males and females. Furthermore, the factor structure for males' self-reported victimization suggested that items representing psychological and mild physical aggression, which loaded on 1 factor, may be perceived similarly. Convergent validity analyses that examined the correlation among CTS traditional and factor scores with jealous actions, control tactics, and attitudes justifying males' and females' use of dating aggression provided initial support for the constructs identified. Results are discussed in terms of improving measurement of dating aggression.Adolescent dating violence has received increased research attention over the past decade. Physical aggression occurs with notable frequency in high school dating relationships. Estimates range from 9% to 41%; rates of self-reported victimization are similar, ranging from 12% to 41% (
Aggression in dating relationships is associated with attitudes that justify its use. Attitudes about dating aggression are targeted by prevention efforts, contributing to a need to measure these attitudes sensitively, accurately, and multidimensionally. We describe two new measures of attitudes about aggression, each tapping different attitudinal components, and compare their psychometric properties with an existing scale. The 1st assesses attitudes about physical aggression in provocative situations. The 2nd taps attitudes about verbally aggressive, controlling, and jealous tactics against a dating partner. Data from 2,313 high school students were factor analyzed and cross-validated for each new scale. Compared with an existing measure, the scales had comparable levels of reliability and validity and improved response distributions. A 2nd-order factor analysis lends support to a multidimensional view of attitudes about dating aggression.
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