Cyber dating abuse: Evidence from a systematic review

Youth use a variety of digital tools to initiate, develop, and maintain a dating relationship. By doing so, youth become more accessible and vulnerable to interpersonal intrusiveness, which can promote certain forms of victimization, such as Cyber Dating Abuse (CDA). The present study provides a systematic review aimed to identify the studies that have been developed on youth CDA, describing their methodology, main objectives and findings, as well the constructs used. We identified 44 studies that met our inclusion criteria. Research on CDA has less than a decade and has mainly been developed in North America. Studies focused on the prevalence rates, the relation between CDA and other variables, and on developing and validating measures. Prevalence rates were variable, which was mainly due to the different methodological characteristics of the studies, such as the measure, participants' demographics, and the time lag of assessment. Nine tools were validated with, in general, diverse factor solutions. CDA was related to a wide range of individual variables and others types of interpersonal violence (e.g., offline dating violence, cyberbullying), but it is unknown if these variables are risk factors or consequences of CDA, since the majority of the studies used cross-sectional designs.