Effectiveness of a Mobile App Intervention to Prevent Dating Violence in Residential Child Care

Abstract

This study focuses on the effectiveness of an app-based, monitored intervention using the Liad@s app in a residential youth-care setting. The aim of this intervention is to reduce maladaptive beliefs and attitudes linked to dating violence: distortions or myths about romantic love and hostile and benevolent dimensions of sexism. A quasi-experimental prepost study with a control group was carried out. Participants were 71 adolescents from 9 group homes in Valencia (Spain). The outcomes measures were hostile and benevolent sexism (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory -ASI), ambivalence and prejudice towards men (Ambivalence toward Men Inventory -AMI), and myths about romantic love. The results of the intervention were assessed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). A post-intervention, statistically significant reduction with a medium-large effect size was observed in all dimensions for the treatment group, with etasquare of .25 for the sexism dimensions, .38 for myths, and .21 for ambivalence and prejudices. The experimental group demonstrated significantly more change than the control group on all measures. The benefits of the intervention did not vary by participants' sex. These results may be helpful to professionals involved in child and youth care, who can profit from adolescents' proclivity toward online communication.

Relations among Romantic Myths, Offline Dating Violence Victimization and Cyber Dating Violence Victimization in Adolescents

“…It would be useful to include these romantic beliefs in intervention programs implemented for adolescents in early adolescence, when first romantic relationships begin and adolescents create patterns of relationships that they will repeat later with other partners. In line with this, some recent programs aimed to prevent DV in adolescents include activities that focus on helping adolescents to rethink the myths of romantic love, the gender stereotypes transmitted by society (e.g., through songs, movies), the sexist attitudes (including hostile and benevolent sexism) and the attitudes of tolerance toward some forms of abuse in romantic relationships [47,69,70]. These intervention programs also encourage adolescents to develop healthy and positive romantic relationships [47,69,70].…”

“…In line with this, some recent programs aimed to prevent DV in adolescents include activities that focus on helping adolescents to rethink the myths of romantic love, the gender stereotypes transmitted by society (e.g., through songs, movies), the sexist attitudes (including hostile and benevolent sexism) and the attitudes of tolerance toward some forms of abuse in romantic relationships [47,69,70]. These intervention programs also encourage adolescents to develop healthy and positive romantic relationships [47,69,70]. The results of the present study provide support to prevent DV in adolescents through such prevention programs.…”

Intimate Partner Cyberstalking, Sexism, Pornography, and Sexting in Adolescents: New Challenges for Sex Education

“…Thus, adolescents' usage of ICT through online applications, video games, etc., should be considered useful to prevent violence and, specifically, partner violence [10]. Following the review carried out by Navarro-Pérez et al [11] on ICT-based intervention tools, the following stand out for the prevention and intervention of Teen Dating Violence (TDV): Teen Choices program [12]; DetectAmor [13] and other mobile applications with a high level of effectiveness such as the Liad@s app [11,14], of an entertaining and educational nature, which aims to help adolescents to have egalitarian and non-toxic couple relationships, and involves having less sexist attitudes, identifying myths about love, and reducing situations of violence in their relationships.…”

Sexismo y mitos del amor romántico en adolescentes que residen en centros de acogida

“…Despite of prolific research literature on sexist beliefs and attitudes in adults and its relationship to additional variables, such as perpetration of gender violence (Gibbons et al, 2011), gender roles and stereotypes (Glick et al, 2015), sexual harassment (Russell & Trigg, 2004), rape myth belief (Davies et al, 2012), there is scarce evidence on adolescence and data is lacking on this problematic in institutionalised infancy and adolescence. Results from Navarro-Pérez et al (2020) reveal that daily experiences of and tolerance to socially accepted sexism have a negative impact on the development of personality in adolescents that are admitted to a residential care facility and removed from their biological family. The objectives of the present study are: (1) to analyse the relationship between sexism and internalization of false ideals about romantic love in adolescents that have been separated from their origin families and live in residential care facilities; (2) to identify the association between experiences of family and partner violence to sexism and romantic love myths; and (3) to identify the impact of age and gender on these factors.…”

“…En el contexto adolescente, los varones expresan mayores niveles de sexismo hostil hacia las chicas, y estas muestran mayores actitudes hostiles hacia los chicos (Bendixen y Kennair, 2017), sin embargo, los hallazgos sobre actitudes benevolentes difieren en función del género. Algunos estudios muestran que las chicas adquieren actitudes más benevolentes que los varones (Navarro-Pérez et al, 2019;De Lemus et al, 2008), o viceversa (Ferragut et al, 2017), o autoras como Viejo y Ortega-Ruiz (2015) no encuentran diferencias entre hombres y mujeres en términos de sexismo benevolente. El estudio realizado por Hammond et al (2017) evidencia que estas actitudes se debilitan a través de la edad.…”