Patterns of Dating Aggression and Victimization in Relation to School Environment Factors Among Middle School Students

Abstract

This study examined relations between patterns of dating aggression and victimization and school environment factors among 4,114 early adolescents attending 37 middle schools in four sites in the United States (51% Black, non-Hispanic, 21% Hispanic, and 17% White). Latent class analyses revealed a five-class solution that differentiated among youth classified as uninvolved (54%), psychologically aggressive victims (18%), aggressors (11%), victims (11%), and aggressive victims (5%). These groups differed in their perceptions of school environment factors, including the quality of student–student and student–teacher relationships, awareness/reporting of violence, school safety problems, and school norms for aggression and nonviolence. Our findings underscore the need for dating violence prevention efforts in early adolescence and the relevance of school environment and more selective interventions.

Patterns of Dating Violence Moderate the Effect of Child Maltreatment on Suicide Risk among Disadvantaged Minority Female Adolescents with Depressive Symptoms

“…The 3-class solution and the specific configuration of classes found were also consistent with two of the five studies on ADV subtypes (Haynie et al 2013;Reyes et al 2017). However, unlike other studies (Choi et al 2017;Goncy et al 2017;Sullivan et al 2019), we did not find support for a victim-only or perpetrator-only class. The small sample size of the current study may have prevented us from having the power necessary to identify unidirectional dating violence classes, which are typically a smaller subset of adolescents, relative to those not involved in any dating violence or those involved in mutual dating violence (Ybarra et al 2016).…”

“…Our study also did not measure all types of dating violence, such as relational violence (e.g., preventing a partner from socializing with friends), and the low endorsement of sexual violence involvement in the current sample prevented its inclusion in the latent class enumeration model, both of which may represent important indicators needed to further differentiate dating violence groups. Our sample size may have also prevented us from finding additional dating violence patterns, such as a victim-and perpetrator-only class found in other studies (Choi et al 2017;Goncy et al 2017;Sullivan et al 2019), although it is consistent with results found in similarly-sized (Reyes et al 2017) and larger sample studies (Haynie et al 2013). Finally, despite temporal precedence for examining a model in which a childhood history of maltreatment is associated with adolescent mental health, the current study used retrospective self-report maltreatment data and was correlational in design, thus preventing conclusions about causality.…”

“…Moreover, greater acceptance of dating violence (Karlsson et al 2016;Temple et al 2013) and use of violence explained the link between exposure to interparental abuse and teen dating violence (Malik et al 1997). Greater beliefs about the acceptability of violence is also positively associated with involvement in romantic relationships characterized by different types of violent behaviors (Reyes et al 2017;Sullivan et al 2019), and a lower likelihood of seeking support for dating violence from either personal or professional sources (Hedge et al 2017). Adolescents with maltreatment histories may be at particular risk for the continuity of dating violence if they are unable to turn to their parents for guidance on how to appropriately prevent or end dating violence.…”

“…Of the five studies that have investigated adolescent dating violence patterns, all found support for a group of adolescents involved in no dating violence and for two other classes characterized by a combination of perpetration and victimization across different types of aggressive behavior. However, whereas two of these studies exclusively found these three patterns (Haynie et al 2013;Reyes et al 2017), three other studies identified two additional classes comprised of teens who were typically only victims or only perpetrators of dating violence (Choi et al 2017;Goncy et al 2017;Sullivan et al 2019).…”

Profiles and Predictors of Dating Violence Among Sexual and Gender Minority Adolescents

“…All studies identify a large group of youth who report low levels of DV victimization and perpetration, as well as a smaller group of youth who report high levels of victimization and perpetration over all or most forms of DV. In cases in which multiple types of DV victimization and perpetration (i.e., physical, verbal, and sexual) are accounted for, previous research has generally identified five classes [6,8,10]. These additional classes have included youth who are high on psychological/verbal violence but not the other types of DV [5,6,8,9,11], youth who report higher levels of victimization but not perpetration [7,8,11], youth who are high in perpetration but not victimization [8], and/or youth that report primarily sexual violence but not other types of DV [6,11].…”