Taking Stock of Behavioral Measures of Adolescent Dating Violence

Abstract

The past 2 decades have witnessed an increase in dating violence awareness and research. As the field evolves, it is critical to examine the definition and measurement of adolescent dating violence. This article summarizes the behavioral measures of adolescent dating violence used in the field. Based on a review of the literature and federally funded studies, we identified 48 different measures. The most commonly used measures were the Conflict Tactics Scale–2, the Safe Dates Scale, and the Conflict in Adolescent Dating Relationship Inventory, which all examine aspects of psychological, physical, and sexual violence. Researchers also adapted or created their own measures. This article concludes with a discussion of developments for consideration as the field moves forward.

KEYWORDS:

• adolescent romantic relationships
• behavioral measurement
• dating violence
• relationship aggression

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Andra Teten Tharp is now with the Air Force Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Office. The authors would like to thank Marni Segall for her efforts in the early stages of this project as well as Vangie Foshee and Luz Reyes McNaughton for the review of a previous version of this article. Opinions, findings, conclusions, and points of view expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Notes

1. We excluded college-only samples because our goal was to provide a representative, but not exhaustive, review of adolescent dating violence behavioral measures. Excluding college-only samples loses no valuable information because the vast majority of these studies rely on some version or a variation of measures already identified from other projects included in this review.

2. Studies specifically referenced in this article are included in the references. For a complete list of studies reviewed, please contact the first author.

3. Only one question specifically asks about boyfriend–girlfriend physical dating violence. For the other types of adolescent dating violence, respondents are first asked behavioral questions about psychological and sexual violence, and the victim–offender relationship is established via follow-up-questions.

4. Eighteen percent of the studies we reviewed captured adolescent dating violence with CTS (Straus, 1979) measures—which is slightly more frequent than CADRI measures (used in 15% of the studies). Nonetheless, we elected to not discuss CTS as a common measure because more than 80% of the studies included in our review that used a CTS measure were already underway (and sometimes finished) before Straus et al. (1996) published the CTS–2. Even among those few studies that continued to use the CTS after CTS–2 was published, most of those studies were finished by 2005. None of the more recent studies we reviewed included CTS measures.