Some concerning information about the realities of teen dating violence (TDV) in an article from Reidy et al. (10.1542/peds.2015-2627), and are based on the responses of 1149 Texas students who were in grades six through twelve when they participated in a cross sectional study between 2011 and 2013. The participating students attended thirty-five different schools, and all were referred for screening by guidance counselors or social workers who knew or suspected that the students might have been exposed to violence in the community or at home.Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention supervised the data collection of paper surveys on six aspects of TDV: controlling behaviors, psychological TDV, physical TDV, sexual TDV, fear and intimidations, injury and self-defense. Students responded to the questions using a 4-point scale of 0-3 where 0 = never, 1 = rarely, 2- sometimes, and 3= often. Students participating were 62% female with an ethnic distribution that was largely Hispanic (53%). African Americans were 16% of the respondents and non-Hispanic whites were 13%. The remaining 13% of participants described themselves as multi-racial.
The results are interesting for what they show in age differences of TDV patterns. Girls more frequently reported perpetrating psychological and physical TDV and twice as many boys reported sexual TDV perpetrations. Girls reported they were victims of fear and intimidation more frequently than did boys. At younger ages, boys reported more sexual DTV victimization and girls reported being victims of DTV at older ages. Younger boys reported more fear/intimidation and injury perpetrations and injury victimization than did younger girls. By age seventeen, adolescent girls reported more injury perpetration than boys, and reports of injury victimization and use of self-defense were similar between both genders.
This research is important because it suggestions TDV patterns change rapidly over a short time period as adolescents grow older. It also suggests that TDV is a more complicated issue than previously realized.
