Adolescent Dating Violence Prevention Programs Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Adolescent dating violence is a fairly recent area of interest. Previously, many researchers had dismissed this area because adolescent relationships were seen as fleeting and somehow less real than adult relationships. Certainly, the transitory nature of adolescent relationships makes it a difficult area to research, but it is an important one nonetheless. In the last 15 years, it has become clear that adolescent dating violence is a pervasive problem effecting approximately one third of adolescents. In addition, there are potential short and long-term negative consequences associated with both victimization and perpetration. As awareness has grown of the pervasiveness and seriousness of the issue, there has been an increasing interest in developing effective dating violence prevention programs.

Preventing dating violence among adolescents is also a critical component in preventing adult intimate partner violence; nevertheless, it is important in its own right due to the negative consequences associated with dating violence. Although there have been few well-researched programs to date (that go beyond self-reported attitude change), emerging research suggests that comprehensive programs of sufficient duration can effectively alter attitudes and behaviors.

Benefits Of Focusing On Prevention With Adolescents

There are several advantages to working with adolescents on prevention initiatives. Developmentally, they are very interested in intimacy and romantic relationships and as a result, can be highly engaged in programming that addresses these issues. There is also a window of opportunity to help them develop healthy relationship attitudes and skills at the beginning of their exploration of intimate relationships before negative patterns become overly reinforced. From a logistics point of view, there are opportunities to work with all adolescents in a universal prevention strategy through the school or other community settings. Finally, adolescent dating violence is an important predictor of intimate partner violence in adult relationships, but the documented effects of adolescent dating violence suggest that it is also an important target in its own right.

Effective Dating Violence Prevention Programs

Different prevention approaches focus on different goals. Primary prevention initiatives seek to engage all individuals whether or not they are particularly at risk for experiencing dating violence. Secondary prevention focuses on at-risk individuals, such as those who are already experiencing violence in their intimate relationships or who have a history of family violence. Effective dating violence prevention programs have been developed to address both of these levels of prevention.

Dating violence prevention programs may take a range of forms including one-time assemblies, classroom based instruction, and community-based intervention groups. Although the nature of activities also varies, most include educational and behavioral components, often within a feminist framework. Two programs that are known to be effective include Safe Dates (a school-based primary prevention program) and the Youth Relationships Project (a community-based secondary prevention program). In contrast to many other initiatives, these programs provide sufficient duration to make significant behavioral and attitude changes. In addition, they both focus on developing skills necessary for healthy intimate relationships and not merely preventing unhealthy ones.

Safe Dates is primarily a school-based program based on the premise that changes in norms regarding partner violence and gender roles and improvement in prosocial skills lead to primary prevention of dating violence. At the secondary prevention level, there is a focus on changing beliefs about the need for help and increasing youths’ awareness of available services. The stated goals of the program are to raise awareness of what constitutes healthy and abusive dating relationships, raise awareness of dating abuse and its causes and consequences, equip students with the skills and resources to help themselves or friends in abusive dating relationships, and equip students with the skills to develop healthy dating relationships. The skills component focuses on positive communication, anger management, and conflict resolution. Safe Dates is structured around nine 45-minute sessions in school, with additional community components. School strategies include curriculum, theater production, and a poster contest. Community components include services for adolescents in violent dating relationships and providing training to service providers. There are also materials available for parents. Teachers who implement the curriculum component receive an extensive 20 hours of training, and community service providers receive 3 hours.

The Youth Relationships Project is an 18-session group-based intervention designed to reduce all forms of harassment, abuse, and violence by and against dating partners. It was designed particularly to address the needs of teens who had grown up with abuse and trauma experiences in their families of origin and who were thereby at greater risk for violence in their own relationships. This community-based group intervention is manual-based and instructs facilitators to help teens develop positive roles in dating by providing information, building skills, and enable the participants to be involved in a community service component. There are three principal sections in the manual: education and awareness, skills building, and social action learning opportunities. Education and awareness sessions focus on helping teens recognize and identify abusive behavior across various domains including woman abuse, child abuse, sexual harassment, homophobia, and racism, with a particular focus on power dynamics in male–female relationships. The skill development aspect of the program builds on this knowledge base by exploring available choices and options to solve conflict more amicably and avoid abusive situations. Communication skills include listening, empathy, emotional expressiveness, and assertive problem solving. Students practice and apply these skills to familiar situations, such as consent and personal safety in sexual relations. Finally, social action activities provide participants with information about resources in their community that can help them manage unfamiliar, stressful issues affecting their relationships. These activities involve youth in the community in a positive way to help them overcome their prejudices or fear of community agencies such as police, child welfare, and counseling. Social action projects engage youths to be actively involved in opposing attitudes and behaviors that foster gender-based violence and similar issues raised in their group.

Research And Evaluation Considerations

Dating violence prevention programs have a shorter history than general violence prevention programs, and very few have been carefully evaluated. Short-term changes in attitudes and beliefs have been documented following classroom discussions or assemblies, but few have had sufficient follow-up with the participants or evaluated actual behavioral change.

The two programs discussed in the previous section are exceptions to this rule and have been demonstrated to produce lasting changes in behavior (in addition to attitudes and knowledge), compared to control groups.

The Safe Dates program was the subject of a rigorous evaluation with 14 schools. The program was found to be effective in both preventing perpetration and reducing perpetration among teens already using violence. Compared to those not participating in the programs, adolescents who attended Safe Dates reported a range of healthier attitudes, skills, and knowledge. For example, they reported less acceptance of dating violence, stronger communication and anger management skills, less of a tendency to gender stereotype, and a greater awareness of community services for dating violence. The Safe Dates evaluation followed participants up to 48 months following intervention, which is highly atypical of these evaluations in general. Analysis at the 1-year and 4-year marks indicated that while some of the gains were not maintained, many were still evident. Perhaps most impressive, 4 years after implementation, participants reported 56% to 92% less physical, serious physical, and sexual dating violence victimization and perpetration than teens who did not participate in Safe Dates. The program was found to be equally effective for males and females and for Whites and non-Whites.

The Youth Relationships Project was evaluated in a randomized trial with 158 high-risk 14to 16-year-olds with histories of maltreatment. The control group was an existing care condition, which typically included bimonthly visits from a social worker and the provision of basic shelter and care. The teens in the study completed measures of abuse and victimization with dating partners, emotional distress, and healthy relationship skills at bimonthly intervals when dating someone. The youths were followed on average for 16 months after intervention; the follow-up showed the intervention to be effective in reducing incidents of physical and emotional abuse over time, relative to controls. An interesting adjunct finding was that symptoms of emotional distress were also lower over time compared to the control group, even though these symptoms were not directly targeted with the intervention.

Implementation Considerations

Developing and evaluating good programs is an important component in preventing dating violence. However, researchers and program developers in other prevention areas (such as general violence prevention and tobacco prevention) have noted that having effective programs is only one piece of the puzzle. It is equally important to attend to issues of implementation or else effective programs will not be used or sustained. Research on implementation of dating violence prevention programs has identified a number of factors that can increase the likelihood of effective and sustainable implementation. General recommendations include (a) evaluating school or community readiness for the program, (b) developing effective school and community coalitions, (c) attending to the fit between the community and the program, and (d) devoting sufficient resources to training, technical assistance, and evaluation. These are important considerations over and above choosing an effective program.

Bibliography:

Foshee, V., Bauman, K., Ennett, S., Linder, G., Benefield, T., & Suchindran, C. (2004). Assessing the long-term effects of the Safe Dates program and a booster in preventing and reducing adolescent dating victimization and perpetration. American Journal of Public Health, 94, 619–624.
Stith, S., Pruitt, I., Dees, J., Fronce, M., Freen, N., Som, A., et al. (2006). Implementing community-based prevention programming: A review of the literature. Journal of Primary Prevention, 27, 599–617.
Whitaker, D. J., Morrison, S., Lindquist, C., Hawkins, S., O’Neil, J. A., Nesius, A. M., et al. (2006). A critical review of interventions for the primary prevention of perpetration of partner violence. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 11, 151–166.
Wolfe, D. A., Wekerle, C., Scott, K., Straatman, A., Grasley, C., & Reitzel-Jaffe, D. (2003). Dating violence prevention with at-risk youth: A controlled outcome evaluation. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 71, 279–291.

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