Dating violence - knowledge and attitudes of adolescents and evaluation of the effectiveness of a brief intervention in high school students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25753/BirthGrowthMJ.v29.i2.18420Keywords:
adolescent, intervention study, partner abuseAbstract
Teen’s inexperience and willingness to please others make them especially susceptible to violent behaviour in relationships, which they accept as natural and as manifestations of love.
This study determines the prevalence of dating violence (DV) in a sample of adolescents from a high school in the northern region of Portugal, their knowledge and attitudes about DV, as well as the effectiveness of a brief intervention to empower adolescents to deal with DV.
This longitudinal, interventional study randomly selected adolescents from a high school and divided them into six groups. Three of the six groups were subject to an intervention about DV. CADRI (Conflict in Adolescent Dating Relationships Inventory) and ADV (Attitudes Toward Dating Violence) surveys were filled out, of which the latter was repeated in the intervention group.
138 adolescents from regular and professional education were included. 75.5% of these adolescents resorted to abusive conflict resolution strategies, 33% to severe violence and 40.6% were victims of severe violence. Males revealed higher legitimization of emotional, physical and sexual violence perpetrated by both males (EVM, PVM, SVM) and females (EVF, PVF, SVF). 69 adolescents participated in the intervention, whereby girls had a non-significant decrease in the legitimacy of SVF, whereas boys showed a non-significant decrease in the legitimacy of EVM.
A high percentage of adolescents used abusive conflict resolution and severe violence strategies. Despite the active participation of adolescents during the intervention, its impact was lower than expected.
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