The Response Of Administrators And Instructors In The Orange County, Florida Public High School System To Dating Violence Preven

Adolescent dating violence occurs in high schools at an alarming rate. To educate adolescents about dating violence, some public high schools have incorporated prevention programs into their curriculum. These programs, which are predicated upon empiricism and behavioral theories, tend to produce limited results. In order to improve prevention programs, it has been suggested that schools should play a larger role in their development and implementation. However, dating violence studies have yet to examine how much school personnel know about adolescent dating violence and prevention strategies. The current study surveyed administrators and instructors at six public high schools in Orange County, Florida about their perceptions of dating violence and attitudes toward dating violence prevention programs. The results indicate that administrators and instructors are fairly knowledgeable about adolescent dating violence, approve of school-based dating violence prevention programs, and are willing to participate in prevention efforts. The results also indicate that administrators\u27 and instructors\u27 sociodemographics have the potential to affect how they feel about dating violence and prevention strategies. Implications of these findings for prevention program development and implementation as well as future research are discussed