Aggression and Vilolence Among Rural Teen

Utah State University, Logan UT

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Abstract

The overall goal of the proposed project is to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the relational and interactional processes contributing to dating aggression among rural adolescent couples. In contrast to the majority of research examining adolescent dating aggression, the current study conceptualizes the couple as the unit of analysis and uses an observational methodology to assess adolescent couple members' own subjective understandings of their interactions. As part of a larger ongoing research plan, this study will also begin to examine the role of ethnicity in understanding communication patterns in adolescent couples and how they relate to dating aggression. A mediational model of dating aggression is proposed in which couple members' perceptions of their communication with their romantic partners mediate the association between family of origin variables and the report of aggression in the relationship. One hundred Euro-American and Latino adolescent couples who have been dating a minimum of four weeks will be recruited from high schools in rural western communities. Couple members will individually complete questionnaires assessing parent relationship qualities and conflict management strategies (both between parents and between participant couple members). In addition, couples will be videotaped having three brief conversations adapted from previous observational work with adolescent couples. Adolescents will then individually view and rate their own and their partners' behaviors using a video-recall procedure. The conversations will be divided into 20-second segments and couple members will rate themselves and their partners on several behavioral dimensions using Likert rating scales for each segment. Analyses will examine the nature of adolescent couple members' perceptions of their interaction and the associations among parent relational quality, couple communication, and dating aggression.