Occurring as psychological, physical, and social violence in relationships, teen dating violence may be regarded as a serious issue that should be addressed through comprehensive interventions (Niolon et al., 2019). Addressing the efficacy of the Dating Matters model for the prevention of negative relationship behaviors among teenagers, Niolon et al. (2019) discover that “Dating Matters students reported 8.43% lower teen dating violence perpetration, 9.78% lower teen dating violence victimization, and 5.52% lower use of negative conflict resolution strategies” (p. 13).
As a comprehensive and multicomponent intervention, Dating Matters focuses on adolescents, their parents, neighborhoods, and schools addressing violence-related factors and the minimization of their impact on young people (DeGue et al., 2021). Evaluating the impact of Dating Matters on sexual violence (SV) and sexual harassment (SH), DeGue et al. (2021) state that the program “shows promise for reducing SV and SH, occurring both within and outside dating relationships, through middle school” (DeGue et al., 2021, p. 175).
The Dating Matters program is available for school personnel, educators, and youth mentors in a form of an online course for the understanding of factors that causes teen dating violence and mechanisms of its prevention (“Dating Matters,” n.d.).
Created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dating Matters may be defined as a comprehensive program for the prevention of teen dating violence that focuses on the development of healthy relationship skills among adolescents before they enter relationships (CDC, 2018).
References
Center for Disease Control. (2018). Dating Matters. CDC. Web.
Dating Matters. (n.d.). Web.
DeGue, S., Niolon, P. H., Estefan, L. F., Tracy, A. J., Le, V. D., Vivolo-Kantor, A. M., Little, T. D., Latzman, N. E., Tharp, A., Lang, K. M. & Taylor, B. (2021). Effects of Dating Matters® on sexual violence and sexual harassment outcomes among middle school youth: A cluster-randomized controlled trial. Prevention Science, 22(2), 175-185. Web.
Niolon, P. H., Vivolo-Kantor, A. M., Tracy, A. J., Latzman, N. E., Little, T. D., DeGue, S., Lang, K. M., Estefan, L. F., Ghazarian, S. R., McIntosh, W. L. K., Taylor, B., Johnson, L. L., Kuoh, H., Burton, T., Forston, B., Mumford, E. A., Nelson, S. C., Joseph, H., … & Tharp, A. T. (2019). An RCT of dating matters: Effects on teen dating violence and relationship behaviors. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 57(1), 13-23. Web.