Efficacy of a dating violence prevention program on attitudes justifying aggression

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1054-139X(96)00309-6Get rights and content

Objectives:

The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate a five-session dating violence prevention curriculum in terms of its effect on attitudes justifying the use of dating violence.

Methods:

The curriculum was implemented in all health classes in a Long Island, New York, school. A total of 193 students participated (boys, n = 106; girls, n = 87). A quasi-experimental design was used to evaluate change in attitudes justifying dating violence, with health classes randomly assigned to the treatment or no-treatment conditions.

Results:

Pre- to postprogram assessments indicated that there were significant decreases in overall attitudes justifying the use of dating violence as a means to resolve conflict among students exposed to the curriculum material, whereas those who were not exposed did not show attitude change from pre- to postprogram evaluation.

Conclusions:

The curriculum shows promise as an effective tool for changing attitudes condoning dating violence. Future research is needed to determine whether the observed attitude change is also linked to reduction in aggressive behaviors.

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      School-aged children spend more time in school than in any other location besides the family home (Pinheiro, 2006), and researching violence against children in schools has been deemed a global priority (Pinheiro, 2006). Most existing research on school-based interventions has been carried out in high-income settings and has investigated intervention effects on conduct disorder (Brantley, Brantley, & Baer-Barkely, 1996; Mark Eddy, Reid, & Fetrow, 2000; Twemlow et al., 2001), bullying (Cross, Pintabona, Hall, & Hamilton, 2003; Frey et al., 2005; Stevens, De Bourdeaudhuij, & Van Oost, 2000), child sexual abuse (Dhooper & Schneider, 1995; Krahe & Knappert, 2009), and dating violence (Adler-Baeder, Kerpelman, Scramm, Higginbotham, & Paulk, 2007; Avery-Leaf, Cascardi, O’Leary, & Cano, 1997; Foshee et al., 1998) among students. School-based interventions aiming to reduce teacher violence in low or middle-income countries are almost non-existent.

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    This study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Training Grant MH19107, to the third author.

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