Teen Dating Violence: Adolescent Development and its Role in the Success of Prevention Programs

This study was conducted to explore adolescent development and adolescent dating violence in order to determine if prevention programs need to be written to reflect the different stages of development. Research was gathered from four areas: adolescent development, adolescent romantic relationships, teen dating violence, and teen dating violence prevention programs. Using an inductive approach, a content analysis of the literature was used to answer the following questions: 1) After reviewing research on adolescent development and adolescent romantic relationships; are there stages in adolescent romantic relationships where conflict appears most often? 2) In the teen dating violence studies, what stage(s) of adolescent romantic relationships was the relationship in when the violence occurred? 3) Are the teen dating violence prevention programs effective across the age ranges for which they are written? An examination of the observations to search for any themes or patterns was performed and any patterns that appeared across the observations were documented. After analyzing the results of the studies, any observations made were summarized