Journal of Knowledge and Best Practices in Juvenile Justice & Psychology

Exposure to neighborhood violence, witnessing school violence, attitudes toward violence against women, perceived norms about violence, age, and sex, were modeled as risk factors for perpetration of physical violence within dating relationships. A total of 456 ninth grade students in rural Mississippi completed a Youth Dating Violence Survey. Gender (female), having attitudes accepting of violence against women, witnessing violence at school, and exposure to violence occurring in one's neighborhood were significantly related to perpetrating intimate partner violence. Intimate partner violence (IPV) can start as early as middle school (Kreiter, Krowchuk, Woods, Sinal, Lawless, & DuRant, 1999; Macgowan, 1997) and is quite prevalent among youth, with 35% to 50% of adolescent dating relationships involving physical violence (O'Leary & Slep, 2003). Numerous physical (Kreiter et al., 1999; Roberts, Klein, & Fisher, 2003) and mental (Ellickson, Saner, & McGuigan, 1997; Lewis, Travea, & Fremouw, 2002; Roberts et al., 2003; Roberts & Klein, 2003) health consequences are associated with the experience of IPV. Because perpetration prevention as compared to victim intervention can have a greater impact on rates of violence, public health researchers have recently focused attention on understanding the risk factors that lead persons to become perpetrators of violence (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2002). Cicchetti and Lynch (1993) and Overstreet and Mazza (2003) propose the ecological-transactional model of violence as a conceptual framework for understanding existing literature and guiding future research efforts on prevention of violence among youth. The basic premise of the ecological-transactional model is that children function within multiple contexts or ecologies that influence each other (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993). These ecologies vary in their proximity to the child and include: (a) the macrosystem, which is the most distal ecology and includes cultural values and beliefs; (b) the exosystem, which consists of the community settings in which the child lives; and (c) the microsystem, which represents the ecologies most proximal to the child, including the family and school environments and peer relationships. Among other microsystem and exosystem risk factors, many researchers have found that those who perpetrate IPV are more likely to have witnessed violence in their homes (Chen & White, 2004; Roberts & Klein, 2003; Seimer, 2004; Short, et al., 2000; Whitfield, Anda, Dube, & Felitti, 2003) and communities (Hurt, Malmud, Brodsky, & Giannette, 2001; Malik, Sorenson, & Aneshensel, 1997; McFarlane, Groff, O’Brien, & Watson, 2003; Obeidallah, Brennan, Brooks-Gunn, & Earls, 2004) than those who do not perpetrate IPV. Consonant with the ecological-transactional model, violence in one context appears to beget violence in additional contexts. Perpetrators of IPV are also more likely than those who do not engage in dating violence to have friends involved in IPV (Arrianga & Foshee, 2004; Foshee, Linder, MacDougall, & Bangdiwala, 2001; Pickett, Schmid, Boyce, & Simpson, 2002). The presence of peers supporting deviant behaviors will in turn influence perceptions of social norms (Pickett et al., 2002; Rickert, Vaughan, & Wiemann, 2002) and attitudes about the deviant behavior (Morris, Anderson, & Knox, 2002; O’Leary & Slep, 2003; Rickert, Wieman, Vaughan, & White, 2004). Perceived social norms about IPV (PickMaranda C. Ward, MPH, Department of Community Health Sciences, School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA. Pamela M. McMahon, Ph.D, MPH, Department of Family and Community Medicine, School of Medicine, Health Sciences Center, Tulane University, New Orleans. Eben M. Ingram, Ph.D, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIP), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) This research was supported by the Society of Public Health Education (SOPHE) Intentional Injury Prevention Fellowship. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Maranda Ward, 7 1⁄2 Quincy Place, NE Washington, DC 20002. E-mail: [email protected]. 6 Journal of Knowledge and Best Practices in Juvenile Justice and Psychology ett et al., 2002) and permissive attitudes toward the use of violence in a dating relationship (Foshee et al., 2001; James, West, Detters, & Armijo, 2000; Malik et al., 1997; O’Keefe & Treister, 1998) are risk factors for IPV perpetration. The studies cited above also support the tenants of ecological-transactional theory, specifically, that children are influenced by the many ecologies in which they develop. Finally, additional studies conclude that the individual level risk markers of sex and age are associated with perpetration of IPV. Counterintuitive to general beliefs, multiple studies have concluded that females report perpetrating IPV more often than males (Foshee, 1996; James et al., 2000; Morris et al., 2002; Roberts & Klein, 2003; Silverman, Raj, Mucci, & Hathaway, 2001) while males report being physically abused by dating partners more often than their female counterparts (O’Keefe & Treister, 1998). Some authors speculate that the higher rates of perpetration found among females may actually reflect a greater willingness to disclose transgressions rather than being a reflection of actual behaviors (Chen & White, 2004). Generally, research concludes that age is a risk factor for IPV perpetration, with older persons more at risk than younger persons (Cotton, Resnick, Browne, Martin, McCarraher, & Woods, 1994; Pickett et al., 2002; Roberts & Klein, 2003; Silverman et al., 2001). The relationship between age and perpetration may be a direct function of time or opportunity to engage in deviant behavior. Most of the research cited above has been conducted with samples of persons that are predominantly White. It is not known if these results can be generalized to minority populations. Therefore, the current study tested the hypothesis that age, sex, attitudes toward violence against women, perceived social norms, witnessing school violence, and witnessing neighborhood violence are significant risk factors associated with IPV perpetration among Black youth.