Canadian Adolescents’ Experiences of Dating Violence: Associations with Social Power Imbalances

Abstract

A substantial minority of adolescents experience and use dating violence in their sexual and/or romantic relationships. Limited attention has been paid to exploring theory-driven questions about use and experience of adolescent dating violence (ADV), restricting knowledge about promising prevention targets for diverse groups of youth. To address this gap, this paper investigates whether factors tied to power imbalances (bullying, risk of social marginalization) are associated with patterns of ADV victimization and perpetration in a large sample of Canadian mid-adolescents. We used data from the 2017/2018 Health-Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study, a nationally representative sample of Canadian youth. Our study was comprised of adolescents who were in grades 9 or 10, and who had dated in the past 12 months (N = 3779). We assessed multiple forms of ADV and bullying victimization and perpetration. We also included six variables assessing adolescents’ risk of social marginalization: gender, race/ethnicity, immigration status, family structure, food insecurity, and family affluence. We used latent class analysis to explore the ways adolescents experience and use different forms of ADV, and then examined whether factors tied to power imbalances (bullying, social marginalization) were associated with classes of ADV. Three ADV classes emerged in our sample: uninvolved (65.7%), psychological and cyber victimization only (28.9%), and mutual violence (5.4%). Bullying was most strongly associated with the mutual violence class, suggesting a transformation of power from peer to romantic contexts. Social marginalization variables were associated with ADV patterns in different ways, highlighting the need to use a critical and anti-oppressive lens in ADV research and prevention initiatives.

Violência digital no namoro entre adolescentes: uma inserção ecológica

“…Resultados semelhantes foram encontrados em outros estudos. 3,4 Em várias narrativas da pesquisa foi possível identificar a bidirecionalidade, 19 ou seja, a violência mútua entre a parceria. Entretanto, convém destacar que a dinâmica relacional ora como vítima, ora como perpetrador(a), em alguns casos, não ocorreu em uma mesma situação de conflito.…”

“…A violência no namoro (VN) é considerada problema de saúde pública que pode impactar a saúde integral de adolescentes a curto e longo prazo, 1,2 a literatura 3,4 revela índices alarmantes do fenômeno entre adolescentes. A Organização Mundial da Saúde (OMS) 1 considera a VN como uma forma precoce de violência entre parceiros íntimos, com as primeiras experiências acontecendo entre 11 e 17 anos de idade.…”

Violência no Namoro entre Adolescentes: Transmissão Intergeracional e Gênero

“…A violência no namoro entre adolescentes é um campo de estudo relativamente recente no Brasil, passando a figurar no cenário científico nacional na segunda década dos anos 2000 (Minayo et al, 2011), realidade diferente em países como Estados Unidos (Basile et al, 2020) e Canadá (Exner-Cortens et al, 2022). Além das altas taxas de perpetração/vitimização (Rey-Anacona et al, 2021;Borges et al, 2020;Veríssimo et al, 2022), consideram-se os desdobramentos que podem impactar a saúde física, mental e social do adolescente ao longo do ciclo vital (Ferreira et al, 2019;Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2021).…”

The Development and Preliminary Validation of a Measure of Victimization within the Friendships of Emerging Adults

“…To explore the construct validity of this measure, we examined the correlation between friendship victimization and dating victimization as assessed by the original CADRI, as well as associations with the positive and negative qualities of both friendships and a dating relationship. Research with adolescents has shown that youth who are victimized by peers are more likely to experience dating violence (Exner-Cortens et al, 2022; K. Smith et al, 2021), suggesting that greater friendship victimization will be associated with greater dating victimization. We further examined the convergent validity of the measure by examining associations with negative features in both a friendship and a dating relationship.…”