Predicting Adolescent Dating Violence Perpetration

Abstract

Introduction Exposure to adult intimate partner violence (IPV) places youth at risk for a range of outcomes, including perpetration of adolescent dating violence (ADV). However, there is variability in the effect of IPV exposure, as many youth who are exposed to IPV do not go on to exhibit problems. Thus, research is needed to examine contextual factors, such as parenting practices, to more fully explain heterogeneity in outcomes and better predict ADV perpetration. The current research draws from a multisite study to investigate the predictive power of IPV exposure and parenting practices on subsequent ADV perpetration. Methods Participants included 417 adolescents (48.7% female) drawn from middle schools in high-risk, urban communities. IPV exposure, two types of parenting practices (positive parenting/involvement and parental knowledge of their child’s dating), and five types of ADV perpetration (threatening behaviors, verbal/emotional abuse, relational abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse) were assessed at baseline (2012) and approximately 5 months later (2013) via adolescent report. Analyses (conducted in 2015) used a structural equation modeling approach. Results Structural models indicated that IPV exposure was positively related only to relational abuse at follow-up. Further, adolescents who reported parents having less knowledge of dating partners were more likely to report perpetrating two types of ADV (physical and verbal/emotional abuse) at follow-up. Analyses did not demonstrate any significant interaction effects. Conclusions Results fill a critical gap in understanding of important targets to prevent ADV in middle school and highlight the important role that parents may play in ADV prevention

Shared Risk Factors for the Perpetration of Physical Dating Violence, Bullying, and Sexual Harassment Among Adolescents Exposed to Domestic Violence

“…The high risk for perpetrating physical dating violence (Foshee et al 1999; Latzman et al 2015), bullying (Baldry 2003; Dauvergne and Johnson 2001), and sexual harassment (Fineran and Bolen 2006) among adolescents exposed to domestic violence points to the need for programs to prevent each of these types of aggression in this high risk group. Because of the difficulties in engaging adolescents exposed to domestic violence in prevention activities (Dutton et al 2003), implementing effective cross-cutting prevention programs (i.e., single programs that can prevent all three types of aggression) is appealing.…”

A comparison of strategies for selecting auxiliary variables for multiple imputation

“…(2015) suggest using principal components of auxiliary variables in the imputation model, instead of the auxiliary variables themselves. Strictly speaking, this approach is a dimensionality reduction method rather than a variable selection method, but we included it in this comparison since it has also been adopted in practice to specify the imputation model (Erentaitė et al., 2018; Jensen et al., 2018; Jensen & Orsmond, 2019; Latzman et al., 2015; Metzger et al., 2018; Nair et al., 2018; Roche et al., 2019), with the R package PcAux available to aid its implementation (Lang et al., 2017).…”

Addressing Adolescent Relationship Abuse in the Context of Reproductive Health Care

“…78 Past literature with parents and youth demonstrates that higher levels of general and dating/ARA-specific parental monitoring (e.g., knowledge of a child's dating activities and partners) are associated with decreased ARA. 79 80 Parent-adolescent communication around dating and ARA is also protective against ARA. 81 82 However, a study examining conversations between parents and adolescents on health-related topics showed that ARA is discussed less frequently than substance use or sexual health.…”