A Study of Factors Predicting Dating Violence Perpetration Among Male and Female College Students

Abstract

Research has found that dating violence is a predictor of marital violence; however, research has been unclear about what predicts dating violence. Past research has been inconclusive. Furthermore, very few studies focus on gender differences in risk factors. This study examines a variety of risk factors for male and female perpetrators of dating violence in college dating relationships. Eight risk factors were used in this study: witnessing parental violence, experiencing childhood violence, problems with alcohol, length of relationship, relationship satisfaction, anger management skills, partner’s use of physical aggression, and partner’s use of psychological aggression. Correlations and multiple regressions were run for each gender. The study found that for males, partner’s use of physical aggression, low anger management skills and high relationship satisfaction were the strongest variables associated with male’ s use of physical aggression against a dating partner. For the females, partner’s use of physical aggression, followed by partner’s use of psychological aggression were the most significant variables. The model in this study was a good predictor of male violence, accounting for 81% of the variance, however, it only accounted for 51% of female violence which indicates that other unknown factors are influential in female’s use of physical violence.