Introduction to the special issue. Prevalence and predictors of teen dating violence: A European perspective.

Abstract

Having romantic relationships free of coercion and violence is one important precondition for the healthy development of adolescents. Violence in adolescent intimate relationships, further defined as teen dating violence (TDV), poses a real threat to adolescents’ well-being. After little societal and academic attention to this issue in the 20th century, TDV has been increasingly researched in the last two decades (e.g., Exner-Cortens et al., 2016; Smith et al., 2015) and is now recognized as a severe global health problem (e.g., McNaughton Reyes et al., 2021). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2021), TDV is an adverse childhood experience and a type of intimate partner violence that occurs in adolescent relationships. TDV refers to physical, sexual, and psychological violence, and stalking, and it can take place face to face, online, and/or through technology (CDC, 2021). The increased societal and academic attention to this topic led to numerous studies, examining its prevalence, predictors, consequences, and prevention measures (see Dardis et al., 2015; MacGregor et al., 2019; McNaughton Reyes et al., 2021; Taquette & Monteiro, 2019, for reviews; see Spencer et al., 2020, 2021; Wincentak et al., 2017, for meta-analyses); however, these studies were mainly conducted in North America. The available literature shows that TDV is a widespread issue, experienced and perpetrated by a substantial proportion of adolescents. For example, the meta-analysis by Wincentak et al. (2017) showed that the prevalence rates of TDV across studies ranged between <1% and 61%, with an overall rate of 20% for physical and 9% for sexual violence. These substantial numbers are worrisome considering that TDV is associated with several health sequelae, such as depressive symptoms, substance abuse, and (sexual) risk behaviors (see MacGregor et al., 2019; Taquette & Monteiro, 2019, for reviews). Furthermore, a wide range of predictors of TDV victimization and perpetration, examining factors at different levels, has been addressed. In particular, factors related to biographical experiences, such as witnessing parental violence or child abuse, as well as cognitive and behavioral factors, such as acceptance of violence, alcohol consumption, or experiencing or perpetrating other forms of violence in the past, were examined so far (see Dardis et al., 2015, for a review; see Spencer et al., 2020, 2021, for meta-analyses). As mentioned above, these data emerged mainly from North America, and the vast majority of knowledge regarding TDV is derived from these North American studies.