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How Much Does School Matter? An Examination of Adolescent Dating Violence Perpetration

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to identify how school factors were related to perpetration of dating violence among adolescents; and (2) to assess how these factors may reduce or exacerbate the relationship between parental domestic violence and adolescents’ perpetration of dating violence, while accounting for individual and family characteristics from early adolescence. Three waves of data from the Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study were used (N = 765; Ages 16–20 at Wave 3). Lagged Ordinary Least Squares multiple regression techniques were utilized to examine the link between perpetration of dating violence and school factors. Results are presented separately by adolescents’ sex and ethnicity-by-sex. Early involvement with antisocial peers and an increase in involvement with antisocial peers over time were linked to perpetration of dating violence for males, females, African-American females, and Hispanic males. Lack of school safety and academic difficulties during early adolescence exacerbated the impact of parental domestic violence exposure for African-American males and Hispanic males, respectively. Early school involvement, surprisingly, exacerbated this impact for Hispanic females. Implications for the prevention of perpetration of dating violence are explored.

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Notes

  1. We utilized the best fitting longitudinal model for our data. Though adolescence is a time of great change, only 16 months (on average) passed between the first two interviews. Scores between Waves 1 and 2 were assessed for change through difference scores and correlations. There was little variation in the difference scores, and the correlations between study constructs were moderately high. Moreover, to test if results varied using alternative models, we estimated additional models: (1) that included Wave 1 predictors only; and (2) a model that included Wave 1 predictors and change scores between Waves 1 and 2. No change scores were found to be significant, and the patterns of statistically significant results did not vary from the models we present here using the average of Wave 1 and Wave 2 predictors. Please note that involvement with antisocial peers was only assessed at Waves 2 and 3. Unlike the other predictors where we did not see significant amounts of behavioral change between the Waves 1 and 2 constructs, a significant increase in participation with antisocial peers was found in this data between Waves 2 and 3. Thus, to be able to capture this increase in behaviors while at the same time reducing endogeneity bias, analyses were run with two measures of antisocial peer involvement: (1) the composite score from Wave 2 of involvement with antisocial peers; and (2) the change score between Waves 2 and 3.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the following organizations. Government agencies: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (RO1 HD36093 “Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children”), Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation, Administration on Developmental Disabilities, Administration for Children and Families, Social Security Administration, and National Institute of Mental Health. Foundations: The Boston Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, The Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Kronkosky Charitable Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Searle Fund for Policy Research, and The Woods Fund of Chicago. A special thank you is extended to our research firm, Research Triangle Institute (RTI), as well as to the children and caregivers who graciously participated in the Three-City Study and gave us access to their lives.

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  1. Department of Human Development and Family Studies and the Institute for Social and Behavioral Research, Iowa State University, 2625 North Loop Drive, Suite 500, Ames, IA, 50010, USA

    Melissa P. Schnurr & Brenda J. Lohman

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  1. Melissa P. Schnurr
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Correspondence to Melissa P. Schnurr.

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Schnurr, M.P., Lohman, B.J. How Much Does School Matter? An Examination of Adolescent Dating Violence Perpetration. J Youth Adolescence 37, 266–283 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-007-9246-7

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