Perpetration of Adolescent Dating Relationship Abuse: The Role of Conditional Tolerance for Violence and Friendship Factors

Introduction: Research has pointed to the salience of friendships in predicting adolescent dating relationship abuse (ARA), through the lenses of both social learning effects and attachment theory. The current study investigates the perpetration of ARA as predicted by individual conditional tolerance for ARA within the context of friendship behaviors and group characteristics.

 

Methods: This study uses two waves of data from the National Survey of Teen Relationships and Intimate Violence (STRiV; n=511 daters ages 12-18), conducted online within the GfK Knowledge Panel. The outcome examined was a self-reported scale including 13 measures of overt and covert forms of physical and sexual abuse perpetrated within the specified dating relationship. We investigated the effects of baseline individual tolerance for ARA and friendship factors on ARA perpetration approximately one year later, allowing for the interaction of youth gender with each of the key predictors. In addition to friends’ perpetration of physical violence, we examined a friend connectedness (measured by discussion of problems), and friendship group structural characteristics (average age difference, gender homogeneity, and the number of friends nominated). Logistic regression analyses were conducted using Stata 14.0 software and reflect the application of weights such that results are representative of U.S. households as of 2013.

Results: Conditional tolerance for hitting boyfriends was associated with ARA perpetration in the absence of friendship characteristics (adjusted odds ratio 2.21; 95% confidence interval [1.05, 4.64]). Daters who reported recent discussion of a problem with friends (2.42; CI [1.01, 5.80]) and female daters who named all-girl friendship groups (5.31; CI (1.19, 23.79]) were also more likely to report ARA perpetration. In the fully adjusted model, controlling for wave 1 ARA reports, the association of a history (wave 1) of discussing problems with friends with subsequent (wave 2) ARA perpetration remains significant (2.74; CI [ 1.07, 7.01]).

Conclusions: Although there has been evidence of peers’ violence relating to dating violence in the empirical literature, in the current study, only friend connectedness predicted ARA perpetration. Close friendships are an avenue for preventing perpetration of sexual and physical ARA. Further, ARA perpetration may be reduced by targeting conditional tolerance for violence particularly against male partners within female friendships groups.