Severity of physical dating violence among Spanish adolescents: a matter of meaning?

Abstract

During last years have risen a lot of studies about Physical Dating Violence (PDV). Boys and girls are involved in these behaviors more than expected. However the most of this literature has not identified the severity of the aggression or the frequency in which it occurs. Some previous studies have pointed out that PDV follows an increasing aggressive pattern, beginning with moderate forms of violence and developing them to more severe aggressive behaviors. This work offers exploratory results on 2695 Spanish adolescents aged 15-20 (X=16.76; s.d.=1.24). They were interviewed using an adaptation of the Straus Questionnaire in terms of their involvement on PDV. Results were analyzed considering the severity and frequency of these behaviors, and the differences among boys and girls. The results have pointed out different patterns for aggression and victimization: moderate and severe aggression showed quite similar involvement rates (16.1% and 19.7% rarely involvement); moderate victimization was quite higher than severe victimization (23.3% vs. 6.7%) and higher than aggression. No sex or age differences were found. Nevertheless, there were different patterns attending to the involvement just in moderate, severe or both, moderate and severe behaviors: for boys, moderate and severe aggression seems to be not different, showing very similar percentages of involvement; girls, in contrast, were more involved in moderate aggression than in severe aggression. For victimization, boys and girls followed the same pattern: the most of them were just involved in moderate forms of victimization. These results are discussed in terms of the meaning that PDV and its severity have for boys and girls.