Study sheds light on the complex dynamics of intimate partner violence in teens and emerging adults

February is teen dating violence awareness month. Fittingly, authors Paat and Hope just published a paper that examines the problem of intimate partner violence (IPV) in adolescent and emerging adult relationships. In their paper, they defined intimate partner violence (IPV) as “aggressive behaviors or tactics that inflict physical, emotional, or psychological abuse with the goal to harm, intimidate, coerce, and exert control over an intimate partner.” Calling IPV a growing public health problem, they noted that ethnic minorities and people between 18 and 24 are disproportionately affected by it. Paat and Hope investigated how physical and psychological IPV victimization and perpetration are connected to high-risk sexual behavior and poor mental health in a Hispanic young adult population. They then looked at questions of persistence, co-occurrence, and bidirectionality (mutual violence) of the IPV. The data the authors used came from the study, Drug Use and Cultural Factors Among Hispanic Adolescents and Emerging Adults, Los Angeles, 2006-2016 (ICPSR 36765) (also known as Project RED or Reteniendo y Entendiendo Diversidad para Salud), which they accessed via the National Addiction & HIV Data Archive Program (NAHDAP).

Project RED aimed to better understand cultural risk and protective factors for substance use among Hispanic adolescents and emerging adults in Southern California. The study recruited over 3,000 9th grade students from predominantly Hispanic and socio-economically diverse high schools in the Los Angeles area. The same students completed follow-up surveys in high school, and after leaving high school, those who were broadly classified as Hispanic or reported to have a parent with Hispanic ancestry were retained for post-high school study waves. The survey asked them about their substance use, acculturation, ethnic identity, cultural stressors, peer and family relationships, and cultural values. Paat and Hope reused Project RED data because among the many scales used, the survey included measures of sexual behavior and interpersonal violence. In their analysis, they used data from 1,547 Hispanic origin respondents from the 6th and 7th waves (between 2013 and 2016), when the respondents were emerging adults.

Among their findings, they showed that experiencing an incident of IPV predicted experiencing IPV again–so it persisted over time. Also, physical and psychological IPV often co-occurred, irrespective of the direction of the violence (perpetration or victimization). Additionally, those respondents who reported more lifetime sexual partners and poor mental health also reported perpetrating more physical IPV. The authors also found that young men were as likely to be victims of certain types of IPV as young women. More publications that reuse data from Drug Use and Cultural Factors Among Hispanic Adolescents and Emerging Adults, Los Angeles, 2006-2016 (ICPSR 36765) are listed here.