Dating Violence Prevention: The Importance of Assessing Behavioral Outcomes

Over the past decade there has been a proliferation of dating violence prevention (DVP) programs targeted to adolescents. Most focus on and measure short-term changes in young people’s knowledge and attitude toward violence in dating relationships. Although attitude and knowledge are important targets of change, in order to fully advance the state of the science it is necessary to comprehensively assess how and whether DVP programs influence behavior, specifically. That is, evaluation programs need to specifically monitor and report the extent to which they result in reductions in aggressive behavior among partners. Attitude should be viewed as a mediating factor in behavior change, rather than a substitute for behavior change itself.

Although attitude and behavior are associated with one another, the association is not perfect, and is muddied by numerous factors. The aims of this presentation are to: (a) describe the relationship between attitudes toward dating violence and behavior, (b) build a rationale for incorporating behavioral outcomes into the evaluation of DVP programs, (c) describe 4 factors that undermine the attitude-behavior association in DVP evaluation studies, and (d) present recommendations for violence prevention practitioners. Emerging theories in health promotion will be referenced.

The 4 factors that undermine the dating violence attitude and behavior association are:

1)      Interpersonal Nature of Violence: Dating violence prevention skills are taught to individuals, but must be carried out in social situations.

2)      “Hot Cognition”: Emotional and physiological arousal likely decrease the chances of carrying out the lessons learned about violence prevention.

3)      “Substance Use”: Use of alcohol and marijuana is widespread and may impair judgment and decision-making during relationship conflict;

4)      “Cognitive Dissonance”: Young people who have assaulted a partner may engage in cognitive dissonance, whereby their attitude toward partner violence changes as a result of their behavior.

The primary outcome of DVP program evaluations has been on attitude and knowledge change; behavior has not been consistently assessed. However, because attitude and behavior can be inconsistent, tracking behavior holds great potential to answer the question of whether program participants are less likely to engage in partner violence. Advancing the science of DVP will require longer-term follow-up of attitudes and behavior.