Fifty-seven percent of participants reported difficulty identifying what constitutes dating violence. Photo by Alex Dolce. Dating violence — physical, sexual, psychological or emotional within a relationship, including stalking — is pervasive on college campuses with far-reaching health implications. One in five women experience a sexual assault in college and students living in sorority houses are three times more likely to experience rape. College students are vulnerable to dating violence because of the influence of their social and living environments. They also wanted to learn more about the role of technology within their lived experiences, which infuses most areas of American life, especially in dating and romantic relationships. Mobile technology allows hour access, which also facilitates stalking and controlling behaviors. Results of the study, published in the journal Violence Against Women , illuminate the span of dating violence knowledge among the participants and point to a lack of understanding of what constitutes emotional violence. Both scenarios indicate rape, yet one of them introduced physical dating violence, which was not acceptable to any participant. The other item introduced coercive sex, which was acceptable to about 25 percent of the participants. Fifty-eight percent of the study participants reported not knowing how to help someone experiencing dating violence, 57 percent reported difficulty identifying what constitutes dating violence, and 38 percent noted not knowing how to get help for themselves if experiencing dating violence. Almost every respondent who noted having experienced intimate partner sexual, physical and emotional violence also documented experiencing intimate partner cyber violence. Participants expressed a decreased sense of personal control over impulsivity and retaliatory behaviors when using technology in relationships, while often justifying the use of this form of violence because of the accessibility of technology. They also described ways in which they were controlled and monitored by partners. They also had a tendency to normalize these behaviors, which led to acceptance, rationalizing and providing excuses for these acts of violence. Study participants failed to mention any resources for psychological services, therapy, prevention programming or dating violence support groups.
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)
Only Instead, study participants turned to peers for help. Gill , Ph. The importance of understanding emotional abuse cannot be understated, as research findings illustrate that emotional violence is just as detrimental as physical violence. The researchers say that because it is evident that peers play a critical role in student growth and development, interventions such as peer training initiatives, need to be appropriately targeted across college campuses. Co-author of the study is Rebekah Byrd, Ph. Tags: faculty and staff research education. Tags: faculty and staff research education Categories. Student Life. University Initiatives. Metrics details. Research demonstrates high rates of physical and sexual victimization of women by intimate partners on college campuses Black et al.
What are the effects of dating violence?
College women in abusive relationships must weigh complex factors health, academics, economics, and social stigma during critical decision-making regarding the relationship. Rather than access formal support systems e. Decision aids have been shown to assist with health-related decisions by improving knowledge, creating realistic expectations, and resolving decisional conflict Cochrane Database Syst Rev —, This study is a randomized controlled trial testing the effectiveness of an interactive safety decision aid web-based and smartphone application App for abused college women and their friends. The App uses this information to provide personalized safety planning information and resources. Outcomes measured for friends are IPV awareness, confidence to intervene, supportive behaviors and decisional conflict. This study is the first, to our knowledge, to test an intervention that engages friends of abused college women. The trial may also inform researchers on the feasibility of safely conducting research with abused women using online recruitment and enrollment methods and collecting data via an App or website. Intimate partner violence IPV is established as a widespread problem with important negative health and social outcomes for women across the lifespan [ 1 , 3 , 5 — 12 ]. IPV is defined as threatened, attempted, or completed physical or sexual violence or emotional abuse by a current or former intimate partner. IPV results in an estimated deaths and 2 million injuries among women annually in the US [ 7 ]. Physical health conditions and risk behaviors are significantly higher among women who have experienced IPV compared with those who have not [ 3 , 8 , 9 ]. Beyond the physical conditions associated with violence, such as injuries and chronic pain, research has consistently demonstrated a strong association between IPV and increased rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD , substance abuse, and suicide [ 13 — 15 ]. Researchers find disturbingly high rates of physical and sexual victimization of women by intimate or ex-intimate partners on college campuses, indicating that college campuses constitute at-risk communities for women [ 3 , 8 , 9 , 16 ]. However, few colleges and universities have prevention and intervention programs for their students, particularly evidence-based approaches tested in controlled trials [ 17 ]. One of the most widely recommended interventions to prevent and respond to IPV is safety planning [ 19 — 24 ]. The safety process takes time, information, and resources, and involves consideration of complex individual factors e. Our challenge is to help college women develop a personalized safety plan that considers these complex factors during critical decision-making regarding safety while in an abusive relationship, and when ending an abusive relationship.
A Longitudinal Perspective on Dating Violence Among Adolescent and College-Age Women
Rather than accessing formal systems for help e. Female college students who are sexual minorities may face even greater challenges; while they are more likely than heterosexual female students to disclose violence or other relationship issues to friends, they are also more likely to report friends were unhelpful [ 32 — 34 ]. In our own work on campuses, friends of women who experience IPV often lacked knowledge of resources available on or off campus and lacked the confidence to intervene [ 35 ]. Arming peers with information and skills to support young women in risky relationships may therefore be a critical aspect of IPV prevention in this population. The influence of informal support systems on IPV survivors is a growing area of literature [ 2 , 31 — 34 ], but little research focuses on the actual perspectives of friends of survivors and the complex decision-making process they are faced with when supporting a friend. Evidence suggests that clinical decision aids can support informed decision making for patients faced with difficult choices e. Decision aids have been shown to effectively reduce decisional conflict by providing information about options and risks involved and clarifying patients' personal priorities [ 4 ] Our team has developed MyPlan, the first, to our knowledge, decision aid designed to assist abused college women and their concerned friends with safety decisions. This paper describes the study protocol our team will use for the effectiveness evaluation of MyPlan. Our overall goal is to develop evidence-based interventions for college-aged women that prevent dating violence and limit the long-term negative physical and mental health consequences of IPV. The MyPlan App then provides the user with a personalized safety plan with links to resources.
Background
Findings from our previous research with an internet-based safety decision aid [ 36 ] and from previous testing of the MyPlan App Prototype [ 37 ] suggest this approach offers college women and friends a unique opportunity to privately consider safety priorities, informs users about danger in the relationship, and provides an ongoing, accessible resource for safety. Therefore, our interdisciplinary team is examining two aims over 3 years:. Aim 1. Aim 2. We hypothesize that friends in the MyPlan safety decision aid App group will have increased awareness of IPV and reduced decisional conflict about safety priorities, which will lead to increased supportive behaviors and confidence to intervene in comparison to the control group. Outcomes for survivors will be collected by self-report at baseline, 6, and months during the App session using validated measures. Friends of survivors will be randomized to the intervention MyPlan App friend component or the control group generic friend IPV resource App. Outcomes awareness of IPV, decisional conflict, supportive behaviors and confidence to intervene for friends will be collected by self-report at baseline, 6- and months post App session using validated measures. A safe email address that an abusive partner does not have access to is also required to receive study related information. Participants will be recruited through multiple strategies proven successful in our recruitment and retention of diverse populations in previous studies. These include partnerships with campuses to post advertisements for the study on campus social media, student listservs, etc. Advertisements on websites such as Craigslist and on community agency websites or social media may also be utilized. Survivors currently in an abusive relationship or experiencing ongoing abuse from an ex-partner are navigating their safety every day, and they know the communication methods that are safest for them. The abusive partner may also harass and monitor friends and family limiting their safe communication methods as well.
Dating Violence: A College Campus Concern
The barriers for one survivor may not apply to another, as each situation is unique. Because the main risk associated with this study is retaliation from an abusive partner if participation is discovered, we want to give participants options for contacting and enrolling in the study in the way that they deem safest for them in order to not put participants at risk. Additionally, we do not want to bias our sample by only being able to recruit participants who can safely contact and enroll in the study via limited contact options. For this reason, we give participants multiple options for contacting and enrolling in the study in the way they deem safest for themselves. Potential participants have the option to visit a secure study website for information about the study, or inquire directly by contacting the study team by email or a toll-free study number. A study website address will be advertised on recruitment materials. If a potential participant visits the study website, the website will follow standard domestic violence program website procedures to initially inform users about the potential for an abusive partner to monitor computer activity and asks users to access the website from a safe computer and provides a link to additional information on using the internet safely. Participants can then can review the study purpose online and answer a set of eligibility criteria questions to determine if they are eligible to participate. Links to community resources e. If a user answers the eligibility questions, the website will be programmed to alert them if they are eligible to participate and if not, direct them to relationship abuse resources. If the participant is eligible and interested in learning more, they will be asked to enter a safe email address or phone number into the website and will be asked to provide instructions on how to be safely contacted e. Information about the risk associated with creating an email trail with the study staff will be given, and the participant can choose if this is safe or not for their specific circumstances. As emphasized previously, giving participants choices in how to enroll and participate in the study safely is essential to ensuring participants are not placed at risk. Both phone and email communication choices are detailed below. If the participant is interested in learning more, indicated by entering safe contact information in the study website, an auto generated email will be sent from the study website to the RA with the participant contact information and the RA will begin attempts to contact the participant either by phone or email, depending on safest available communication options provided by the potential participant. Once the participant is reached, the RA will document how they heard about the study, as the different recruitment strategies are a rich source of information for planning dissemination approaches. If a potential participant feels safer contacting the study staff by phone or email rather than via the study website, the RA will give the potential participant a brief description of the study and then assess for eligibility verbally or via email, depending on safe available communication options provided by potential participant. In an effort to provide safe options for enrollment at every step, a variety of options for communication with the research team are provided to accommodate participant preferences.Some may not want to answer the eligibility questions online, for example, while others may prefer this option over talking with someone or emailing. Once eligibility has been assessed, the RA will conduct informed consent with potential participants. In Maryland, we requested a waiver of signed consent from the IRB and will use an oral consent script to conduct informed consent in lieu of requiring a signed document linking the study participant to a relationship abuse study. As previously indicated, giving participants the choice of the safest method for communicating with the study staff and conducting informed consent is important for safety reasons. The RA will ask whether the participant has any questions, answer any such questions, and then ask if they consent to be in the study. Community resources e. If the participant indicates on the study website or to the RA via email that the phone is not the safest way to communicate and that they would like to continue by email, the RA will inform the participant that conducting informed consent via email means that the oral consent script containing detailed information about a relationship violence study with a request to indicate consent to participate, will create an additional linkage to the study, and to consider whether it is safer to do via phone. This will take place in several steps to ensure the participant has the opportunity to ask questions, and that the RA gets confirmation that the participant understands the consent information. The final step will be to ask if they agree to take part in the research study. Once a participant consents to enroll, the RA will explain the purpose of collecting safe contact information for follow up surveys and will collect safe contact information. For this study population, safe contact methods will likely consist mainly of email or text contact, but may also include phone and mail. The study team will contact participants in the manner participants deem safest see Retention section. At each contact point, participants will be asked if there have been any changes to their safe contact information.
https://www.ilcadv.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DatingCollegeWomen-300x186.pngThe Truth About Domestic Violence on College Campuses
Upon obtaining informed consent, collecting safety contact information, enrolling participants and entering their information into the secure study database, participants will be randomly assigned to intervention or control groups using a computerized stratified blocked randomization scheme. Randomization occurs automatically at the time of enrollment via a randomization algorithm. The participant will have two options to access the App. The first option is to download the App to their smartphone from one of the major U. App stores, where it will be posted as a free App available to anyone with a smartphone. Once downloaded, the App is user and password-protected, like a bank App, preventing others not enrolled in the study e. With either mode of access, users will enter an assigned username and password the first time the App is accessed. They will also be instructed to set a security PIN code as the primary means to access the app once logged in. Users can define any 4 digit code to be the PIN and if they need to reset the PIN, must first log out and then back in using their username and password. Participants will be instructed to remove the App once they have completed the session if unsafe to have on their device, though warned that it is not currently possible to delete apps from a purchase history. Data collected from participants is labeled as either study data or personal identifiers. In order to ensure the highest protection of privacy and security, all personal identifiers only collected at study enrollment are saved in a physically separate database in a HIPAA compliant network environment.Study data and personal identifiers are never combined during the course of the study. Detailed safety procedures have been developed and are explained in the Risks section. Participants access the study website or App to complete data collection. This has several advantages: the participant can complete the instruments whenever it is convenient, and the data are entered by the participant, eliminating at least two sources of error — misreading hand-written forms and data input error. Electronic data collection may reduce social desirability bias compared to face-to-face interviews [ 38 , 39 ]. For ease and to keep participants engaged with the website and App, we use radio buttons i. Participants can contact the RA if they have technical problems with the website or App, questions or concerns about the study, or need help finding someone safe to talk to. If participants contact the RA for assistance with safety or distress, the RA will be trained to respond with compassion and will provide the participant with the National Dating Violence Hotline phone number and website. Participants who do not complete the baseline assessment within the first four days will be sent an automated reminder email. The RA will continue to follow-up with participants who have consented and have not completed the session using the safe contact information provided by the participant until: 1 the sessions are completed, 2 the participant indicates they have decided not to continue with the study, or 3 6 weeks from the date of enrollment has passed. The baseline window closes and attempts to contact cease 6 weeks after enrollment. This instrument asks if each strategy has been used over the last 6 months and if the strategy was helpful in dealing with the abusive partner or abuse. The checklist includes use of formal services e. The percent of safety behaviors tried by survivor that she found helpful will be the primary outcome. Decisional conflict immediately post intervention : The decision process for survivors is measured with questions adapted from validated subscales of the Decisional Conflict Scale DCS [ 42 , 43 ]. The DCS tests whether using this safety planning decision aid helps a woman to understand the advantages and disadvantages of safety planning options and to know her values related to them. The Decisional Conflict Scale discriminates between people who make decisions and those who delay making decisions. The DCS consists of twelve items e. The DCS provides a total score, which is a measure of the decision process, as well as scores for four subscales feeling informed, certainty about decision, values clarity, and support , with higher scores on the DCS indicating a greater degree of decisional conflict indicative of a poorer decision process [ 39 , 40 ].
Domestic Violence Statistics
Decisional conflict will be measured pre and post the first use of the decision aid. IPV exposure : The Composite Abuse Scale CAS is a item validated comprehensive intimate partner violence screening measure with strong psychometric properties [ 48 , 49 ]. A item self-report measure screens for depressive symptoms in community samples. The revised CESD correlates highly with the original, demonstrates good to excellent face and construct validity and excellent internal consistency [ 44 — 46 ]. Drug and alcohol abuse : A modified version of the Monitoring the Future Drug and Alcohol Questionnaire is used to measure alcohol and drug use. Participants are asked to self-report on how many occasions they have used alcohol in the last 30 days and in the last 6 months, as well as binge drinking behavior. Decisional conflict at 6 and 12 months : In addition to measuring decisional conflict outcomes immediately post intervention, decisional conflict outcomes will be assessed at six and 12 months. Items ask about what the participant has done to support a friend in an abusive relationship e. Decisional conflict immediately post intervention : The decision process for friends is measured with questions adapted from validated subscales of the Decisional Conflict Scale DCS [ 42 , 43 ] used for survivors for Aim 1. After completing the measures in the App, the participant will then be directed to the next section of the App, the MyPlan intervention. For both friends and survivors, the intervention starts by listing information about common IPV myths, and then describes characteristics of healthy relationships.A weighted scoring algorithm provides an instant DA score range 0—38 graphically with narrative on the level of danger [ 53 , 54 ]. For example, the score is converted to the validated levels of danger such as: 1 variable danger low risk, but situations change quickly, a score of less than 8 ; 2 increased danger a score of 8—13 ; 3 severe danger a score of 14—17 ; and 4 extreme danger a score of 18 and above [ 54 ]. The participant is provided with personalized messages about their danger based on their score. These are then combined mathematically to generate priority weights. After setting priorities, participants receive a personalized graph with the results. The control App is based on usual safety planning services college women and friends have access to on-campus and on the Internet through IPV websites. We will not use the DA or DA-R for risk assessment in the relationship as these are specific components of the safety decision App intervention, but we will assess risk factors for severe violence as identified on IPV websites such as the Red Flag Campaign. The control group App will provide women and friends with brief safety planning information and IPV resources targeted to college students age 18—24 years. Follow-up App sessions for both groups will be conducted at 6 and 12 months post-baseline. These time points are selected for several reasons, including findings from previous research that IPV frequency and severity often increases over the course of a violent relationship, making it important that participants have access to the App to input changes in risk factors for IPV and review their safety plan at multiple time points [ 20 ]. Further, follow-up contacts provide important opportunities for the RAs and study participants to reconnect related to the study and supports retention of participants that may have to relocate for safety. Participants will be encouraged by email, text and phone contact by the RA to access the password-protected App to complete the session and follow-up assessment. As noted above, for all outreach to participants, the RA will use safe contact information and preferred mode of communication provided by the participant. The post-baseline data collection will consist of the same questions collected at baseline but will focus on outcomes since the previous session. Several methods used by the research team have proven valuable in retention of participants in longitudinal studies [ 55 — 58 ]. All retention activities will be adjusted to meet the safety needs of the participant, on an individualized basis. Retention strategies include:. Asking participant at enrollment for several at least two names, phone numbers, e-mails of individuals i. We will also ask if texting and leaving a message for each phone number is safe. Safely contacting participants throughout the study, this includes contacts in-between 2, 4, 8, 10 months the scheduled post-baseline sessions to briefly assess for safety, confirm contact information, and ascertain any anticipated changes to contact information;.
College Alliance Against Sexual Assault
Using a safe email address, an automated email is sent to the participant announcing a follow up App session 6 or month is due. The window opens and this email is sent 2 weeks before the 6 and month follow up due date. If unable to reach the participant via direct contact info, the RA will attempt to contact alternate contacts family, friends listed up to 2 times each. The follow up window closes and reminders cease 6 weeks after sending the 6 or month follow up due email;. Providing compensation to each participant for his or her time and expertise. Use of a secure study database for organizing participant contact information and study schedule. Before any analyses are carried out, the data will be audited for quality and completeness, including missing data patterns, evaluation of distributions for outliers in quantitative data, and checking distributions of variables to ensure that they meet the assumptions of planned analyses. Chi-square tests for categorical variables and t-tests for continuous variables will be used to test for differences between the safety intervention and control groups on baseline variables that are potential confounding variables. These included relationship status dichotomous: currently residing with the abuser or not ; language English or Spanish , baseline knowledge of safety options continuous ; clarity of safety preferences continuous ; perception of support continuous ; computer experience continuous. Variables for which significant differences are found will be included as covariates in the analyses where appropriate. All analyses will use intent-to-treat principles. Change on the Decisional Conflict subscales, e. Group intervention vs. Time e. The level 1 model yields an intercept and slope parameter for each person. The intercept reflects the baseline value on the dependent variable and the slope reflects the rate of change across time on the dependent variable.Group will be used as a level 2 predictor of slope parameter. Finding the group is a significant predictor of the level 1 slope parameters means that individual change over time differs for intervention and control groups. Potential confounding variables for which intervention and control groups are significantly different at baseline will be entered as level 2 covariates predicting individual change. Additionally, change in decisional conflict will be tested as a mediator of the relationship between the intervention and safety behaviors at 12 months for both survivors and friends of survivors using a series of regressions. Separate analyses will be conducted for the women and friends. A similar approach will be used to test safety behaviors at months as a mediator of the relationship between the intervention and change from baseline to months in IPV for the women and confidence to intervene for friends. Included in these models will be a group intervention vs. This will allow us to test if the effect of the intervention varies by the level of the moderator. We will control for baseline scores on the outcome measures in this analysis as the level of use of the App may depend on severity of violence. This analysis will examine if repeated use of the App results in greater improvement in the outcome scores. We based the power analysis on a repeated measures ANOVA, but propose to use multilevel modeling for the analyses which allows all cases with missing data to be included in the analyses. We do not have adequate estimates of the within and between variance to estimate power for the multilevel model directly. We have powered the study at the. Since the primary purpose of the safety intervention is to increase safety-seeking behaviors, the power analysis is based on an effect size calculated from the results from a previous IPV intervention [ 36 ]. These investigators evaluated the effect on safety-seeking behaviors of a telephone intervention compared to usual safety services in Spanish-speaking and English-speaking women who obtained restraining orders. The effect size, f, was computed to be 0. Using means obtained from the telephone intervention study, this effect size is equivalent to a mean change from baseline to follow-up of Assuming an autocorrelation of 0.
Domestic and Dating Violence
Even in a scenario where the attrition rate would be As compared to the risks of a person seeking services and communicating with domestic violence services in the community, and viewing domestic violence safety information on a website or App, the risks are no greater. These risks will be minimized by developing and training study staff on safety protocols. All participants will be notified that they can withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. Although the circumstances of abuse may be distressing for survivors and friends to discuss, traumatized persons generally find expression of feelings useful. The research plan was developed with deliberate attention toward minimizing the risk of harm to abused women and friends of abused women. Following these safety protocols in previous online research, no adverse events were reported. We are extremely concerned about safety, and this concern underlies the rationale for our procedures and research. Confidentiality is considered primary to this study protocol. Implementing important safety procedures for the internet and handling study data will serve to protect participants from harm. During the study, participants may stop at any time.
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All participants and those not eligible for participation will be offered information on safety resources for IPV. No information will be given out to anyone outside the research team about whether a particular person participates in the study. Trained research staff will conduct all aspects of the study. All research team members will be trained using the approved protocol. Research team members will complete online human subjects research training through their institution. Further, all research team members will receive and review documentation on policies and procedures for managing and reporting adverse events that might arise during the study. The study investigators, who have many years of experience in the field of IPV and intervention research, will train all research staff prior to their involvement in the study. All research staff members will be provided a training manual as a reference. Refresher training and assessment will occur at least annually in order to prevent drift from these research protocols for safety. Risk will also be minimized by providing participants with choices to allow the participant to decide the safest way for them to communicate with the study. Potential participants will be provided with a description of the risks or discomforts and the anticipated possible benefits. Additionally, to minimize the linkages of a participant to the study, the study is requesting a waiver of signed consent and will conduct oral consent in lieu of requiring a document about a relationship violence study containing a signature.
‘Boys Will be Boys’ – Study Explores Views of College Dating Violence
A link, username, and password to the secure study App will be emailed to the safe email provided by participant. The App measures and intervention will not collect any protected health information PHI from the participant. There is risk that an abusive partner could uncover the trail of sites visited by the participant and discover the purpose of the study. All persons with access to data PI, co-investigators, RAs, consultants will rigorously follow procedures to ensure confidentiality of data. All data will be secured in a password-protected, secure server and database. Contact information PHI will be collected for the participants separately and maintained securely in the study database on our secure server. No persons other than the investigators and study RAs will have access to contact information. Contact information for participants will be destroyed following completion of the study. Only a single file will contain PHI linking subject-identifying information names with study ID code. These sensitive files containing identifying information will be encrypted. All other study materials and files will only include the study ID code. The study hast the potential to significantly advance the science of IPV prevention and response through multiple innovations. Secondly, MyPlan is appropriate for college women in same-sex relationships, using a revised version of the Danger Assessment DA demonstrated to accurately predict violence in abusive female same-sex relationships by Glass et al. Including sexual minority women and providing a tool specific to their relationships and context is of critical importance for culturally competent safety interventions. Thirdly, to our knowledge, MyPlan is the first IPV intervention for college women that also engages friends, an important support system for this age group, in safety planning [ 17 ]. We believe this will be the first experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of a safety intervention App with young women who experience IPV and with friends of young women experiencing IPV on university and college campuses. Addressing this paucity of research is critical because the stakes are high for young women and their friends faced with safety decisions and planning.Google Scholar. Perspect Psychiatr Care. Article PubMed Google Scholar. Amar AF, Gennaro S. Dating violence in college women: associated physical injury, healthcare usage, and mental health symptoms. Nurs Res. Decision aids for people facing health treatment or screening decisions. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. The impact of different types of intimate partner violence on the mental and physical health of women in different ethnic groups. J Interpers Violence. Adolescent dating violence: prevalence, risk factors, health outcomes, and implications for clinical practice. J Obstet Gynecol Neonatal Nurs. Adverse health conditions and health risk behaviors associated with intimate partner violence--United States,
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