Domestic violence in adolescent romantic relationships is an increasingly important and only recently acknowledged social issue. This book provides conceptual frameworks for the design and evaluation of interventions with a focus on developing evidence based practice, as well as a research, practice and policy agenda for consideration.

Developmental and clinical researchers have only just discovered the phenomenon of adolescent romance as a topic of serious scientific inquiry. This discovery may be related to the overwhelming evidence that adult romantic relationships are failing at alarming rates. Dramatic increases in the rates of divorce, out of wedlock childbirth, and relationship violence lead to questions about the developmental precursors of romantic love and commitment. What's wrong with love and can it be fixed? This book brings together a diverse group of experts from various disciplines to address a serious gap in the understanding of adolescent development. Part I focuses on romantic relations and sexual behavior from the perspective of normative adolescent development. Part II centers on high-risk adolescents and Part III explores the practical implications of current theory and research for clinicians, educators, and health administrators. Together the chapters in this integrative and clinically useful book lay a foundation for understanding how adolescents successfully navigate the tumultuous waters of young love.

Originally published in 2000, this was the first volume to examine adolescent romantic relationships.

Adolescent Dating Violence: Theory, Research, and Prevention summarizes the course, risk/protective factors, consequences and treatment/prevention of adolescent dating violence. Dating violence is defined as physical, sexual, psychological, and cyber behavior meant to cause emotional, physical, or social harm to a current or former intimate partner. The book discusses research design and measurement in the field, focuses on the recent influx of longitudinal studies, and examines prevention and intervention initiatives. Divided into five sections, the book begins by reviewing theory on and consequences of dating violence. Section II discusses risk factors and protective factors such as peer influences, substance use, and past exposure to violence in the family of origin. Section III discusses how social and cultural factors can influence teen dating violence, addressing the prevalence of dating violence among different ethnicities and among LGBTQ teens, and the influence of social media. Section IV discusses recent research priorities including gender inequality, measurement, psychological abuse, and the dual nature of dating violence during adolescence. Section V reviews evidence-based practice for treatment and prevention across various age groups and settings. Encompasses physical, sexual, psychological and cyber violence Introduces theory on dating violence Emphasizes results from longitudinal studies and intervention initiatives Highlights the influence of social media and technology on dating violence Discusses ethnic, gender and other social and cultural differences in prevalence Examines evidence-based practice in treatment and prevention

Policymakers are interested in promoting healthy marriages in adulthood by providing services to strengthen the adolescent precursors of healthy marriage, especially within low-income populations. But if programs and curricula targeting adolescent romantic relationships are to be effective, they must be grounded in an accurate understanding of how adolescent relationships function and the role that they play in the development of healthy adult marriages. This report evaluates the current landscape of theory, research, and interventions addressing the role of adolescent romantic relationships in the development of healthy adult marriages. Drawing on a thorough review of the existing theoretical and empirical literature in this area, as well as interviews with practitioners directly involved with developing or administering relationship education to adolescents, the authors bring together relevant research and theory from a wide range of disciplines that have examined these issues, and suggest future directions for research and intervention. In particular, they note that although research describing romantic relationships in low-income populations is sparse, there are already-existing nationally representative data sets that include data from substantial numbers of well-sampled low-income adolescents. Analyses of these data would have relatively low cost and a potentially high yield for informing policies that target low-income youth.

Violence: Probing the Boundaries around the World includes implicit and explicit contributions to the conceptualisation of violent processes across the world, the circumstances that enable them to exist and opens ways to think valuable interventions.

Violence experienced in early and mid-adolescent romantic relationships (known as teen dating violence) is an important public health issue, and the three papers in this volume each address a different research question on this topic. Emerging research demonstrates that individuals who experience victimization in adolescence are more likely to be re-victimized in future relationships; however, past work on this topic is limited by potential confounding, and lack of assessment of potential mediators of this relationship. Thus, the first paper (Chapter Two) used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to explore pathways to revictimization, adjusting for confounding using a high-dimension propensity score. Results indicated that dating violence experienced during adolescence was indirectly associated with intimate partner violence experienced 12 years later, through the experience of intimate partner violence at 5.5 year follow-up. These findings, as well as all empirical findings in the field, rest on the quality of measurement, and so the selection of a measure for a given research study is an important task. Currently, however, no comprehensive compendium exists that presents teen dating violence measures with evidence of reliability and validity and discusses strengths and limitations of these evidencebased measures. Thus, the second paper (Chapters Three and Four) presents a two-part comprehensive review of teen dating violence measures that have been the focus of psychometric testing. This review also summarizes empirical literature that uses identified measures. Due to the complex and nuanced nature of interpersonal interactions, psychological aggression is a particularly difficult construct to measure. Empirical data show that psychological aggression is common in teen dating relationships, but to more precisely answer questions about the impact of this aggression on healthy development, measures must be designed that capture psychological aggression that is purposeful, serious and perceived as harmful. The third and final paper in this volume (Chapter Five) reports on the initial adaptation of a measure of severe psychological aggression (the Measure of Psychologically Abusive Behaviors; Follingstad, 2011, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 26(6)) for teen dating relationships. Together, these three papers advance understanding of teen dating violence and support its developmental and public health importance.

Understanding interpersonal relationships requires understanding actors, behaviors, and contexts. This 2002 volume presents research from a variety of disciplines that examine personal relationships on all three levels. The first section focuses on the factors that influence individuals to enter, maintain, and dissolve relationships. The second section emphasizes ongoing processes that characterize relationships and focuses on issues such as arguing and sacrificing. The third and final section demonstrates that the process of stability and change are embedded in social, cultural, and historical contexts. Chapters address cultural universals as well as cross-cultural differences in relationship behaviors and outcomes. The emergence of relational forms, such as the interaction between people and computers, is also explored. Stability and Change in Relationships will be of interest to a broad range of fields, including psychology, sociology, communications, gerontology, and counselling.

Adolescence is a pivotal period of development with respect to health and illness. It is during adolescence that many positive health behaviors are consolidated and important health risk behaviors are first evident; thus, adolescence is a logical time period for primary prevention. In addition, the predominant causes of morbidity and mortality in adolescence are quite different from those of adults, indicating that early identification and treatment of adolescent health problems must be directed to a unique set of targets in this age group. Moreover, because of the particular developmental issues that characterize adolescence, intervention efforts designed for adults are often inappropriate or ineffective in an adolescent population. Even when chronic illnesses are congenital or begin in childhood, the manner in which the transition from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood is negotiated has important implications for disease outcomes throughout the remainder of the person’s life span. Organized in five major sections (General Issues, Developmental Issues, Treatment and Training, Mental Health, and Physical Health) and 44 chapters, Handbook of Adolescent Health Psychology addresses the common and not so common health issues that tend to affect adolescents. Coverage includes: ▪ Context and perspectives in adolescent health psychology ▪ Health literacy, health maintenance, and disease prevention in adolescence ▪ Physical disorders such as asthma, obesity, physical injury, and chronic pain ▪ Psychological disorders such as substance abuse, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, and eating disorders ▪ Congenital chronic diseases such as type 1 diabetes and spina bifida Handbook of Adolescent Health Psychology is the definitive reference for pediatricians, family physicians, health psychologists, clinical social workers, rehabilitation specialists, and all practitioners and researchers working with adolescents.

How does being male or female shape us? And what, aside from obvious anatomical differences, does being male or female mean? In this book, the distinguished psychologist Eleanor Maccoby explores how individuals express their sexual identity at successive periods of their lives. A book about sex in the broadest sense, The Two Sexes seeks to tell us how our development from infancy through adolescence and into adulthood is affected by gender. Chief among Maccoby's contentions is that gender differences appear primarily in group, or social, contexts. In childhood, boys and girls tend to gravitate toward others of their own sex. The Two Sexes examines why this segregation occurs and how boys' groups and girls' groups develop distinct cultures with different agendas. Deploying evidence from her own research and studies by many other scholars, Maccoby identifies a complex combination of biological, cognitive, and social factors that contribute to gender segregation and group differentiation. A major finding of The Two Sexes is that these childhood experiences in same-sex groups profoundly influence how members of the two sexes relate to one another in adulthood--as lovers, coworkers, and parents. Maccoby shows how, in constructing these adult relationships, men and women utilize old elements from their childhood experiences as well as new ones arising from different adult agendas. Finally, she considers social changes in gender roles in light of her discoveries about the constraints and opportunities implicit in the same-sex and cross-sex relationships of childhood.