Informal helpers’ responses when adolescents tell them about dating violence or romantic relationship problems

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Journal of Adolescence Journal of Adolescence 30 (2007) 853–868 www.elsevier.com/locate/jado

Informal helpers’ responses when adolescents tell them about dating violence or romantic relationship problems Arlene N. Weisza,, Richard M. Tolmanb, Michelle R. Callahanc, Daniel G. Saundersb, Beverly M. Blacka a

School of Social Work, Wayne State University, 337 Thompson Home, Detroit, MI 48202, USA b University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA c 360 Strategies, W. 34th Street, Penthouse, New York, NY, 10001, USA

Abstract This study examines the responses of informal helpers to adolescents who disclose dating violence or upsetting but non-violent experiences in their romantic relationships. Based on a survey of 224 Midwestern high school students, the study found that youths were more likely to disclose problems to friends rather than others. A factor analysis of potential helpers’ responses showed that, compared to avoidance and minimization, nurturing was the most typical response received. Adolescents who told someone about being victimized by severe dating violence were more likely to receive an avoidance response than those who told about less severe dating violence. Males encountered high levels of minimization regarding less severe dating violence. While friends and family seem to respond effectively to romantic relationship problems, youths need more training in how to respond helpfully to friends’ difficulties with dating violence or how to encourage victims to seek help from trained practitioners. r 2006 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Dating problems; Dating violence; Help-seeking; Support systems

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 313 577 4420; fax: +1 313 577 8770.

E-mail address: [email protected] (A.N. Weisz). 0140-1971/$30.00 r 2006 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.2006.09.004

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Introduction When adolescents begin dating, they venture into a world where they may not be prepared to respond to romantic relationship problems. Because romantic relationships play a significant role in adolescents’ mental health and set the stage for adult relationships (Leaper & Anderson, 1997), the process of seeking and receiving help for dating problems is important. When adolescents encounter relationship problems and seek help from others, the adolescent’s description of the problem affects the potential helper’s response, which, in turn, can be very influential in affecting the adolescent’s subsequent feelings and behaviour. The importance of helpers’ responses is magnified when violence is among the problems in a romantic relationship, but helpers may be unprepared to respond effectively to severe dating violence. Therefore, this article compares helpers’ responses when adolescents seek help about various dating problems, whether they are of a non-violent nature or involve different levels of violence. Definitions of ‘‘dating’’ vary for adolescents, so estimates of dating prevalence also vary. Research on high school students in North Carolina reported that 76.4% had been on a date (Ashley & Foshee, 2005), while a study of middle and high school students in rural New England reported that 45.1% of males and 50.3% of females had a romantic partner (Laursen & Williams, 1997). Another study found that 36% of seventh graders and 45% of tenth graders said they had a boyfriend or girlfriend (Furman & Wehner, 1997). Reporting on the percent of adolescents who experience dating problems is also hampered by definitional disagreements and a scarcity of research. Some research suggests that adolescents report frequent conflicts with dating partners and that conflicts increase as they mature (Seiffge-Krenke, 1997). Studies indicate that about one third of high school students experience dating violence (Foshee et al., 1996; Jezl, Molidor, & Wright, 1996; Malik, Sorenson, & Aneshensel, 1997; Molidor & Tolman, 1998) and that dating violence impacts their psychological well being (Callahan, Tolman, & Saunders, 2003; Silverman, Raj, Mucci, & Hathaway, 2001). The social milieu is particularly important for adolescents, for a number of reasons. Because they have little experience to rely on, youths look to others for cues on how to respond to dating problems. Their support systems can help them distinguish between acceptable ‘‘ups and downs’’ in relationships and unacceptable violence and abuse. If their support systems respond in unhelpful ways, adolescents may be less likely to seek further help about relationship problems or more likely to continue in abusive relationships. Because the help seeker initiates the sequence of help-seeking events, we begin with a review of research on adolescent help seeking, first for dating problems and then for dating violence. Because literature on responses to adolescent help seeking for violent and non-violent dating problems is scarce, we also looked at literature on adult domestic violence victims’ help seeking. In addition, literature on the decision-making process of potential helpers about whether to help provides insights into the other side of the interaction between help-seekers and potential helpers. Adolescents’ help-seeking for dating problems A study of Israeli adolescents by Tishby et al. (2001) reports that youths say they would turn to peers more often than others for help with relationship problems. Tishby et al. suggest that adolescents are more apt to seek help from peers about romantic relationship problems, because

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their friends better understand the social scene and are less likely to respond in intrusive or irrelevant ways. The authors point out that, in addition to other concerns such as confidentiality, adolescents often do not know how to access formal help. Tishby et al. (2001) suggest that the psychological costs of seeking help might be too high, threatening an adolescent’s self-esteem and feeling of independence. Boldero and Fallon (1995) found that adolescents most often choose friends versus others for help with interpersonal problems. Fallon and Bowles (1999) similarly found that among youths that experienced problems in the interpersonal domain, 77% went to their friends for help. While youth most often seek out their friends for help, that action may not immediately reduce their distress. Rickwood (1995) found that seeking help in resolving personal problems did not alleviate psychological distress among adolescents, probably because seeking help itself has costs. Seeking the advice of others can result in interpretations that add to the stress of the situation, and simply focusing on the problem may amplify distress. Similarly, Berman, Kurtines, Silverman, and Serafini (1996) reported that adolescents’ perception that social support is available was more beneficial to them than actually receiving support, suggesting that the responses of potential helpers might not have been attuned to the adolescents’ needs. In a study of German adolescents, Nieder and Seiffge-Krenke (2001) found that among early adolescents primary dating problems related to getting a partner, whereas older adolescents had deeper feelings about dating problems. Adolescents began by turning primarily to friends to cope with early romantic relationship stressors, while later turning to their partners for help. Some demographic characteristics have been studied in relation to adolescents’ help seeking. Most consistently, gender has been found to influence adolescent help-seeking behaviours (Boldero & Fallon, 1995; Schonert-Reichl & Muller, 1996; Tishby et al., 2001). Females are significantly more likely than males to seek help with the problems they face (Fallon & Bowles, 1999; Raviv, Sills, Raviv, & Wilansky, 2000). In Timlin-Scalera, Ponterotto, Blumberg, and Jackson’s (2003) qualitative study, boys talked about going to friends for help with dating problems because friends understand them best. However, they also reported that seeking help from peers about dating problems is often ineffective, because it can lead to gossip. Adolescents’ help-seeking in response to dating violence Adolescent survivors of dating violence, as well as adult battered women (Horton & Johnson, 1993; Kelly, 1996; Rose, Campbell, & Kub, 2000), are inclined to seek informal help before they seek formal help, and few adolescents ever report dating violence to adults (Ashley & Foshee, 2005; Jackson, 2002; Molidor & Tolman, 1998). Studies have reported that survivors of teen dating violence are most likely to tell peers, if they tell anyone, and that few youths talk to formal helpers about the violence (Molidor & Tolman, 1998; Watson, Cascardi, Avery-Leaf, & O’Leary, 2001). Jackson, Cram, and Seymour (2000) found that the male and female students (62.5% of each) who talked to someone about the violence they experienced in a dating relationship indicated that talking had been a positive experience because it helped them to feel supported and sort out their problems. Adolescents’ reluctance to seek help from adults can make them increasingly vulnerable physically and psychologically (Levy, 1998). Jackson (2002) reported that adolescents were less likely to break-up with the perpetrator if they disclosed emotional or physical abuse or sexual coercion to someone. Research shows that adolescents’ attitudes often support continuing a

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relationship after an incident of dating violence (Carlson, 1990; Gamache, 1998; Sugarman & Hotaling, 1998), so disclosing to peers might contribute to continuing a violent dating relationship. Salazar, Wingood, DiClemente, Lang, and Harrington (2004) found that for African American girls, social support did not moderate the effects of dating violence, but was a mediating variable between dating violence and psychological well-being. The researchers believe the lack of a moderating effect might be because peers lack knowledge of how to help or because family members feel helpless in dating violence situations. While researchers and program developers suggest that prevention programmers should help adolescents improve their advice to friends about dating violence (Ashley & Foshee, 2005; Weisz & Black, Unpublished manuscript, n.d.; Weiss, 2003), there has been little systematic research to show what kind of help is currently being given or how it can be improved. Responses to help-seeking of adult survivors of intimate partner violence and rape The literature on adult domestic violence raises the concern that inadequate responses from informal helpers can perpetuate violence (Klein, 2004; Rose et al., 2000), because helpers may blame the victim or encourage victims to remain in violent relationships. Mitchell and Hodson (1983) surveyed 60 domestic violence survivors who had sought help at shelters about several aspects of their support systems. They asked the women a series of questions to determine whether potential informal helpers responded to the survivors with empathy or avoidance. Their questions about empathic responses asked how much friends encouraged the survivor to continue to discuss the battering. They found that, when the violence was severe, avoidance responses from friends and family were more likely. Avoidance responses were significantly associated with depression, lower self-esteem, and less of a sense of mastery in survivors. Empathic responses were significantly associated with higher self-esteem. In addition, women who did not experience avoidance responses from informal helpers were more likely to use active coping strategies to respond to the domestic violence. Mitchell and Hodson note that potential supporters are sometimes uncomfortable with strong emotional reactions, such as depression, and they may try to minimize the situation, avoid responding, or cheer the person up. Mahlstedt and Keeny’s (1993) study of young adult dating violence victims suggested that support systems’ responses to survivors can increase or decrease victims’ self-blame. In addition, they found that adult survivors were anxious to avoid having members of their support system take control or tell them what to do. Respondents reported that they wanted understanding, advice, listening, and did not want to be blamed. These researchers found that the most common responses of network members were listening, giving helpful advice, and being angry with the assailant. Rose et al. (2000) reported that, in a series of in-depth interviews, adult battered women emphasized the importance of ‘‘having someone to talk to’’ or ‘‘having a sense that they would be listened to (p. 31)’’. However, the researchers noted that all of their interviewees expressed some dissatisfaction with the amount of social support they received. There were various reasons for this dissatisfaction, but sometimes the lack of social support seemed to result from self-imposed isolation and/or isolation imposed by batterers. Some battered women hesitate to trust anyone, since the person that should be closest to them was abusive. Rose et al. suggested that emotional

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support from informal helpers might encourage battered women to seek instrumental support from domestic violence programs or from professionals. How survivors present an incident to potential helpers might affect the type of response that they receive. For example, minimizing severe abuse might be a way for victims to prevent negative or avoidant reactions from potential helpers. Dunham and Senn (2000) found that of the 182 college women who experienced intimate partner abuse, 67% had disclosed this information, primarily to friends and sometimes to relatives. However, 36% of those who told indicated that, at first, they had minimized the abuse to friends or family. Women who had experienced more severe abuse or who had more accepting attitudes toward physical abuse were more likely to minimize during disclosure. Responses of potential helpers Research on help seeking suggests that altruism and self-concern play major roles in people’s decisions about whether or not to help (Stephan & Stephan, 1990). When people feel that helping will reduce their own discomfort or guilt, self-concern can lead to helping. The greater the person’s need, the greater the likelihood that others will help, unless helping carries too great a cost or if it appears that it will not relieve the recipient’s distress (Stephan & Stephan, 1990). Overall, people may try to minimize the costs of helping while maximizing the rewards. The decision to help is more often based on the perceived costs of helping, rather than potential rewards (Stephan & Stephan, 1990). Individuals may be more altruistic about people who are similar to themselves (Kowalski & Westen, 2005; Stephan & Stephan, 1990). Social norms about helping can also play a role (Stephan & Stephan, 1990). Yee and Greenberg (1998) presented female college students with vignettes about a robbery or burglary. They found a decreased perception of need and less intent to help when the victim was angry, as opposed to sad or fearful. Therefore, they suggest that potential helpers might believe that help is unnecessary if the victim is angry. Hypotheses Our study seeks to improve descriptions of how adolescents’ networks respond to various types of romantic relationship problems, including dating violence, and to improve descriptions of the determinants of how networks respond to these problems. Based on the literature, we hypothesized the following similarities and differences between responses adolescents would receive from potential helpers after disclosing non-violent romantic relationship problems, less severe dating violence, and severe dating violence. Level of distress, gender, severity of an incident and the adolescent’s immediate emotional reactions may all impact how others respond to disclosure of romantic relationship problems. Adapting the paradigm of Mitchell and Hodson (1983), we examine three types of possible network responses: nurturing, avoiding, and minimizing. Given that networks include multiple members, it is possible to examine each of these dimensions independently, e.g. networks may respond with both nurturance and avoidance. The greater the distress adolescents feel, the more likely that their networks will respond to the need with nurturing responses. We predict that girls will receive nurturing responses from their networks more than boys, perhaps because boys are less likely to be highly distressed or to share

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this distress with others. In addition, a victim who appears or feels distressed is more apt to be nurtured, as some network members will respond to the perceived need. However, others will avoid because they feel threatened or believe that responding carries too great a cost. Severe violence will also be more likely to generate nurturing responses than less severe incidents, because severe violence is associated with higher distress or because it is otherwise perceived as indicating a greater need. However, the literature suggests that severe violence is also more likely to generate avoidance from some network members. Therefore, both avoidance and nurturing responses will be more prevalent for disclosure of severe incidents. Greater severity of an incident should predict fewer minimizing responses.

Method Data for these analyses come from a study of dating problems and dating violence in a Midwestern, urban, public high school with 526 students. Permission slips describing the purpose and goals of the study and requesting the active consent of a parent were mailed to the adolescents’ homes and distributed to the students in the school. Participants received a $5 payment for completing the self-administered questionnaire, which took about 45 min to complete during a single session. Students completed the surveys in the lunchroom or school library during the school day. In all, 224 students completed the questionnaire. Twenty-seven cases were omitted from the data analyses, because students indicated that they had no dating experience or left many questions incomplete, leaving 197 usable cases for our analyses. Ninety-three (47.2%) of the respondents were female, and 104 (52.8%) were male. African American students comprised 49.7% (98) of the total sample; European Americans comprised 43.1% (85) of the total sample, with 3.6% (7) of the students identifying themselves as Hispanic/ Latino/Chicano/Puerto Rican. There was one Asian and one Native American student, and the remaining 2.5% (5) of the students did not identify a racial background. Thirty-four percent of the students were from the 9th grade, 19.8% from the 10th grade, 24.4% from the 11th grade, and 21.8% from the 12th grade. Eighty (40.6%) of the students in the sample received free lunches at school, a proxy for low socio-economic status. The sample matched the ethnicity of the total school population but differed in socio-economic status, because 65% of the school population received free lunches. Instruments The complete survey contained multiple instruments, including questions about students’ coping strategies, post-traumatic symptoms, overall history of dating violence, and worst violence experienced ever. However, we describe here only those sections of the survey that are relevant to the current analysis. Worst romantic relationship experience For the worst non-violent experience in a romantic relationship, the survey asked youths to identify: (1) who saw what happened; (2) where it happened; (3) how the respondents reacted to what happened; (4) how badly they were emotionally hurt by what happened and how stressful

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the event was for them; (5) why they thought it happened; and (6) whom they talked to about the experience. The survey also asked whether the experience was an argument, a physical fight, a break-up, or other. If respondents did not answer the dating violence question but did describe their worst experience in a romantic relationship as a physical fight, we deleted their answers about the worst romantic relationship experience from the database to eliminate cases where students seemed confused by the directions. The survey included an open-ended question asking the respondents to describe what happened during the event. Most of the events that adolescents described were arguments or break-ups related to cheating, jealousy, rumours, or disagreements about sex. Adolescents’ reactions to these experiences are good indicators of how serious the incident was and how they described the incident to potential helpers, so we used some ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no’’ questions about respondents reactions as independent variables. Dating violence experience We asked the students to report on any experiences of violence in a dating relationship. Students who had experienced any type of dating violence were then asked to respond to questions about the worst dating violence victimization that they experienced, using items from the Revised Conflict Tactic Scale (CTS2) (Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, & Sugarman, 1996), the most widely used measure of interpersonal violence. In our analyses of the worst dating violence incident, we distinguished between youths who were victimized by less severe violence only or by severe acts of violence. We used Straus et al.’s (1996) severity distinction to create scales for less severe and severe violence victimization. We included ‘‘grab, push or shove, and slap’’ as less severe violence and we included ‘‘kick, punch, choke, beat, forced sex, and threaten with a knife or gun’’ as severe violence. This distinction has been commonly used in other research (Gelles, 1991; Johnson, 1995) but has not been validated. While some of the violence was mutual, we focus on victimization here, because help seeking for perpetration probably has different dynamics (Ashley & Foshee, 2005). The survey then asked youths to identify: (1) who saw what happened; (2) where it happened; (3) what happened and who did it; (4) how the respondents reacted to what happened; (5) how badly they were emotionally hurt by what happened and how stressful the event was for them; (6) why they think it happened; (7) what meaning they attached to what happened; (8) whom they talked to about the dating violence; and (9) who used physical force first during the incident. Responses of friends and family We adapted nine items from a scale developed by Mitchell and Hodson (1983) to measure the how social networks responded to disclosure of the negative relationship experiences. Respondents reported how friends and family reacted to their disclosure of the worst dating violence victimization and the worst romantic relationship experience, using a Likert rating of potential reactions ranging from ‘‘0’’ for ‘‘not at all’’ to ‘‘4’’ for ‘‘quite a bit’’. Mitchell and Hodson did not conduct a factor analysis and grouped their items into ‘‘empathic’’ and ‘‘avoidance’’ responses. We conducted factor analyses using the principal components method of extraction and varimax rotation on eight of the nine items we used from the original scale. We dropped one item ‘‘Became annoyed when you didn’t accept advice’’ because of its ambiguity. Factor analyses revealed the same three factors for the two types of situations: AVOID, NURTURE, and MINIMIZE. The NURTURE factor includes the items that Mitchell and

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Hodson labelled ‘‘empathic’’, while their avoidance response includes our AVOID and MINIMIZE factors. For the analyses using these factors, we used the grand mean of the items for each factor. The NURTURE factor consisted of the following three responses: ‘‘were sympathetic’’, ‘‘urged you to talk about how you felt’’, and ‘‘met with you more often.’’ For the worst dating violence incident, the subscale had a reliability of a ¼ .87 and for the worst romantic relationship experience, it had a reliability of a ¼ .66. The AVOID factor consisted of the following three responses: ‘‘seemed uncomfortable talking about it’’, ‘‘saw less of you’’, and ‘‘tried to change the topic’’. For the worst dating violence incident, the subscale had a reliability of a ¼ .58 and for the worst romantic relationship experience, it had a reliability of a ¼ .80. The MINIMIZE factor consisted of the two responses: ‘‘pointed out good parts of your relationship with your boyfriend/girlfriend’’ and ‘‘said things weren’t so bad’’. For the worst dating violence incident, this subscale had a reliability of a ¼ .67 and for the worst romantic relationship experience, it had a reliability of a ¼ .71. Emotional impact of the event We used the combined means of two Likert scale items to measure emotional impact of the dating events: ‘‘how badly were you emotionally hurt’’ and ‘‘how stressful would you say this event was.’’ For the worst dating violence, the correlation of the two items was (r ¼ :71; po:001), and for the worst romantic relationship experience the correlation was (r ¼ :64; po:001). Analyses We conducted bivariate analyses using correlations, w2, and t-tests. For the t-tests, we used the three response factors as dependant variables. We used ANOVAS to examine the possible interactions between gender and the response factors for each of the three levels of severity. In spite of conducting multiple analyses, we report findings at the po:05 level of significance, because our study is exploratory and appears to be the first research focusing specifically on this population and topic. Results Numbers of respondents by situation and gender A total of 170 students (75 girls and 95 boys) responded to questions about their worst romantic relationship experience. For worst dating violence, 32 girls and 25 boys responded, totalling 57 respondents. Of these, 13 girls and 14 boys reported that their partner committed acts of severe dating violence during the incident. Disclosure of the worst romantic relationship experience and worst dating violence When examining the responses to disclosure of worst romantic or dating violence experiences, it is important to know to whom the disclosures were made. Table 1 shows details of whom the

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adolescents told by gender. Overall, youths were equally likely to talk to someone after the worst romantic relationship experience (74.5%) and after being victimized by severe dating violence (74%), while 62% talked to someone after less severe dating violence. After the worst romantic relationship experience, 27.4% of the youths talked to more than one person, compared to 28% for less severe dating violence and 44.4% for severe dating violence. Adolescents were most likely to talk to peers, if they talked to anyone, after all three types of dating experiences. For more detailed analysis of disclosure, see Black, Tolman, Callahan, Saunders, and Weisz (in press). Types of responses received after telling someone about the incident Table 2 presents the mean level of network response across the three types of situations: worst romantic, less severe dating violence, and more severe dating violence. For the worst romantic relationship experience, nurturing and minimizing responses were significantly higher than avoiding responses: NURTURE vs. AVOID (F ¼ 128:06, po:001); MINIMIZE vs. AVOID (F ¼ 76:60, po:001). There was a significant gender by response interaction as well. The difference between nurturing and avoiding responses was bigger for girls than boys (F ¼ 5:31, po:05). For less severe dating violence, nurturing and minimizing responses were also significantly higher than avoiding responses: NURTURE vs. AVOID (F ¼ 29:79, po:001); MINIMIZE vs. AVOID (F ¼ 17:67, po:01). The gender by response interaction analysis revealed that the difference between minimizing and avoiding responses was greater for boys than for girls, due apparently to the higher levels of minimizing for boys (F ¼ 5:57, po:05). However, because the sample size is small, we have limited confidence in this finding. In severe dating violence situations, nurturing responses were higher than avoiding responses (F ¼ 11:95, po:01). There was no difference between avoidance and minimizing or nurturing and minimizing.

Table 1 Persons talked to about worst romantic relationship experience, less severe, and severe worst dating violence

I I I I I I I

talked talked talked talked talked talked talked

to to to to to to to

nobody a female or male friend my boyfriend/girlfriend my brother or sister my mother or father another family member adults in the school

Worst romantic relationship experience

Worst dating violence— less severe

Worst dating violencesevere

Female (%) Male (%) N ¼ 75 N ¼ 90

Female (%) Male (%) N ¼ 17 N¼9

Female (%) Male (%) N ¼ 13 N ¼ 14

20.0 64.0 24.0 13.3 17.3 8.0 4.0

23.5 70.6 29.4 0 11.8 5.9 0

15.4 61.5 15.4 30.8 0 15.4 0

30.0 46.7 16.7 13.3 15.6 6.7 1.1

66.7 33.3 11.1 0 0 0 0

35.7 57.1 28.6 14.3 14.3 7.1 7.1

% within gender of respondents to question. Percentages do not total 100% because adolescents may have told more than one person about the experience.

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Table 2 Mean levels of responses factors and types of situations

NURTURE AVOID MINIMIZE

Worst romantic relationship experience

Worst dating violence—less severe Worst dating violence-severe

Females

Male

Total

Females

Male

Total

Females

Male

Total

N ¼ 62

N ¼ 67

N ¼ 129

N ¼ 13

N¼4

N ¼ 17

N ¼ 11

N ¼ 11

N ¼ 22

M (S.D.)

M (S.D.)

M (S.D.)

M (S.D.)

M (S.D.)

M (S.D.)

M (S.D.)

M (S.D.)

M (S.D.)

2.33 (.72) 1.08 (.17) 3.00 (.70)

2.31 (.83) 3.06 (.89) 1.92 (1.06) 2.49 (1.11) 1.19 (.39) 1.97 (.82) 1.24 (.40) 1.61 (.73) 2.06 (1.00) 2.00 (1.07) 1.91 (1.20) 1.95 (1.11)

2.66 (.88) 2.34 (.97) 1.42 (.65) 1.50 (.72) 2.31 (1.11) 2.32 (.97)

2.49 (.94) 2.31 (.89) 1.46 (.68) 1.23 (.44) 2.31 (1.04) 1.77 (.90)

Emotional impact of the event by severity of violence and responses factors Girls were significantly more impacted emotionally than boys were by the worst romantic relationship experience (Girls: M ¼ 2:98, S.D. ¼ 1.18; Boys: M ¼ 2:37, S.D. ¼ 1.08; t ¼ 3:51, po:01, 2-tailed). Girls also experienced significantly more emotional impact than boys for severe dating violence (Girls: M ¼ 3:54, S.D. ¼ 1.37; Boys: M ¼ 2:50, S.D. ¼ 1.20; t ¼ 2:01, po:05, 2tailed). Level of emotional impact did not differ by gender for less severe dating violence. Emotional impact was positively correlated with NURTURE for the worst romantic relationship incident (r ¼ :44; po:001) and for severe dating violence (r ¼ :69; po:001). Emotional impact was not related to the other two response factors. Comparisons among types of events We compared network responses for teens who reported on two types of events (worst romantic relationship experience and dating violence) to examine whether type of experience influenced how networks responded. Due to small sample size, we combined less severe and severe dating violence for this analysis. Twenty-four teens replied as to how potential helpers responded for both the worst romantic relationship and worst dating violence situations. Paired t-tests showed that there were no significant differences in mean levels of the three response factors. We also compared responses by severity of worst dating violence. Independent samples t-tests showed that there was a significant difference between less severe and severe dating violence in levels of the AVOID response (t ¼ 2:24, po:05, 2-tailed). The means for AVOID were as follows: less severe dating violence (M ¼ 1:19, S.D. ¼ .39, n ¼ 17) and severe violence: M ¼ 1:61, S.D. ¼ .73, n ¼ 22). Relationship between emotional reactions and responses received We used respondents’ reported expressed emotional reactions (laughing or crying after the incident) as indicators of seriousness of the incidents. We then examined whether these reactions

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were associated with responses from their networks. Again, because the sample size was small, we combined less severe and severe dating violence categories for this analysis. Respondents who reported that they cried in reaction to the worst romantic relationship incident received more nurturing than those who did not cry (cry: M ¼ 3:00 S.D. ¼ .87; not cry: M ¼ 2:31 S.D. ¼ .89; t ¼ 3:92, po:001, 2-tailed). Those who laughed in reaction to the worst dating violence received significantly less NURTURE (t ¼ 2:41, po:05, 2-tailed) and AVOID (t ¼ 2:83, po:05, 2-tailed) than those who did not laugh. The mean levels of NURTURE were 2.00 (S.D. ¼ .99) for those who laughed and 2.74 (S.D. ¼ .91) for those who did not laugh. The mean level of AVOID for those who laughed was 1.13 (S.D. ¼ .28), and it was 1.58 (S.D. ¼ .71) for those who did not laugh. For worst romantic relationship incident, females were significantly more likely to cry in reaction to the experience (w2 ¼ 25:02, df ¼ 1, po:001) and significantly less likely to laugh (w2 ¼ 7376, df ¼ 1, po:01). There were no significant associations between these reactions and gender for worst dating violence.

Discussion Across gender and type of experience, nurturing was the most common response of helpers, but responses differed somewhat depending on the severity of the dating experience. These differences can shed light on how adolescents and their support groups understand these situations and how prevention programs can target interventions. Whom youths told and how they told Our findings confirm previous research that adolescents were most likely to talk to peers, if they talked to anyone, so the potential helpers were primarily other adolescents with limited experience about dating problems and even less experience with dating violence. Adolescents’ understandings and reactions to the situations might have affected their telling of the story to potential helpers, or they might have attempted to ‘‘manage’’ helpers’ reactions by how they told about the incidents (Dunham & Senn, 2000). For example, adolescents who reported the highest level of emotional impact about the two types of incidents also received the highest level of nurturing responses, most likely eliciting stronger nurturing responses because of how they related the incident. In turn, helpers’ responses might have affected respondents’ ratings of emotional impact. Types of responses received after telling someone about the incident At all three levels of severity, nurturing was the most common response and differed significantly from the amount of avoidance received. This suggests that across all levels of severity, potential helpers recognized the need for nurturing and were able to do so more often than they avoided the help-seeker. The adolescents may have selected helpers according to their knowledge of who would be the most nurturing. Social norms that value helping might have outweighed the costs of helping in the less severe situations (Stephan & Stephan, 1990), but the more severe a dating violence incident was, the more potential helpers avoided the help-seekers.

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Helpers’ levels of minimization were significantly higher than their avoidance in the less severe situations. However, helpers may have realized the inappropriateness of minimization for severe dating violence. We found that severe dating violence victimization was associated with more avoiding responses, suggesting that some of the potential helpers did not feel able or willing to help with severe violence. Friends might avoid talking about the situation, because they fear the abuser (Mitchell & Hodson, 1983) or lack ideas about how to respond safely to severe dating violence (Weisz & Black, Unpublished manuscript, n.d.). Unfortunately, these avoidance responses may have left without help those survivors who had the strongest need for support (Gamache, 1998) and may have made them less likely to seek help if violence recurs. Peers might feel threatened when hearing of severe violence, because they might be reminded that they, too, are vulnerable to severe violence in their relationships. A very strong feeling of denial may be triggered by hearing of severe violence happening to friends (Malley-Morrison & Hines, 2004). Peers from whom adolescents seek help are more likely to have had ordinary dating problems, so it is easier for them to identify with those seeking help for similar problems. However, peers and adults are less likely to have experienced severe intimate partner violence. Avoidance in response to severe dating violence might also be related to the finding of other studies that people help less if they perceive that their help will not relieve the recipient’s distress (Stephan & Stephan, 1990). It might be beneficial for youthful victims of severe dating violence to seek help from professionals, who have training and experience in responding to severe violence or other intensely emotional situations and are less likely to respond with avoidance. Reactions of the help-seekers and responses received The respondents who reported that they cried in reaction to the worst romantic relationship incident received more nurturing than those who did not cry, but this difference was not significant for worst dating violence. This may mean that helpers did not need to see tears to realize that dating violence is painful and upsetting. Those who laughed in reaction to the worst dating violence received less nurturing and less avoidance than those who did not laugh. Here potential helpers’ responses may have been related to how the help seekers related the story, and helpers might have been less likely to avoid those who could tell about the incident in a humorous way. Gender of the help-seeker We hypothesized that boys would receive less nurturing and less avoidance than girls would. Overall, girls reported receiving more nurturing than minimizing for the worst romantic relationship experience, possibly because of the greater emotional impact they reported. Girls might have received more nurturing responses from their support systems for worst romantic relationship experiences, because their level of distress differed from boys or because of the way they related the event. Boys received more minimizing than avoidance for less severe dating violence than did girls. This may reflect that the incidents were actually less severe for boys than for girls (Molidor & Tolman, 1998) or it may reflect a societal trivialization of male victimization (Hilton, Harris, &

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Rice, 2003; Timlin-Scalera et al., 2003). Given that boys’ reported emotional reactions reflected less distress than the girls’ reactions, it also may be that helpers did not perceive the incidents to be as serious, because of the boys’ presentations. Helpers may respond to girls and boys differently based on their perceptions and expectations about the neediness of each gender or the willingness of each gender to accept help. Perhaps the socialization that encourages males to appear strong and unemotional led to boys’ presenting the less severe dating violence in less emotional ways, and that led to minimizing (Meth, 1990; Pollack, 1998). The differences between boys’ and girls’ network responses may also reflect gendered patterns of selection of potential helpers. For romantic relationships problems, boys might have turned to male friends who were uncomfortable with relationships issues or emotions because of their own male socialization. Girls’ violence and the issue of bi-directionality of adolescent dating violence (Worcester, 2002) are receiving attention in the literature. Our findings, do suggest that when males are victimized by less severe dating violence, usually perpetrated by females, potential helpers do not take it very seriously. Limitations We must note that the study has limited generalizability, because the study was done in a small high school of 526 students, where relationships between peers might have been closer than in many high schools across the US that often have at least 1000 students. The cross-sectional design of the study prevents us from understanding whether helpers’ reactions affected survivors’ emotional impact levels. We did not ask whether the respondents were afraid, angry, or sad about the events, but these emotions in the help-seeker might influence the responses of potential supporters (Yee & Greenberg, 1998). We have no data from potential helpers about reasons for their responses, and we lack data on whether helpers provided any instrumental support, help with safety planning, or encouragement to seek professional help. The survey does not ask respondents how they selected their helpers (Sullivan, Marshall, & Schonert-Reichl, 2002) or how the helpers’ responses affected the survivors’ plans for their relationship. It also did not ask youths about the other types of responses they would have liked to receive from helpers. We were also unable to analyse whether adult or peer potential helpers differed in their responses. There are several different ways to ask adolescents about help seeking after dating violence. For example, Ashley and Foshee (2005) asked victims and perpetrators whether they ever sought advice about what they should do in the face of victimization or how to stop victimizing. Therefore, their question had a more narrow focus than our question that asked whether respondents talked to someone about the situation. Future research on help seeking should include broader and narrower questions about teen-agers’ intentions in talking to others about dating problems. Implications Because positive support can prevent further problems or more severe problems, it is important for youths to be able to turn to friends and family for support with relationship problems. However, help seekers’ narratives about dating incidents interact with potential helpers’ needs and

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perceptions to produce responses that vary in their helpfulness. While the high level of nurturing that our respondents received is an encouraging finding, the increased avoidance response for severe dating violence suggests a need for prevention programs that give friends and family effective skills for responding to dating violence. Programs can also educate adolescents to avoid minimizing in response to male victimization by dating violence, because the violence might be serious or might lead to an escalation of mutual violence. Prevention programs can educate peers and parents about how to respond differently to different types of dating problems, and they can inform potential helpers about the risks of avoidance responses to dating violence. Prevention programs can also teach youths that the increased complexity of dating violence, compared to other relationship problems, might require learning how to help friends to access formal support. Adolescents may need to be aware of definitions of abuse so that they can make distinctions between when to turn to partners or peers for help with dating problems and when to turn to others. Youths might not know that trained helpers can assist survivors to redefine violence as unacceptable and that they can inform survivors of new ways to respond to dating violence. References Ashley, O. S., & Foshee, V. A. (2005). Adolescent help-seeking for dating violence: Prevalence, sociodemographic correlates, and sources of help. Journal of Adolescent Health, 36, 25–31. Black, B.M., Tolman, R.M., Callahan, M., Saunders, D.G., & Weisz, A.N. (in press). When will adolescents tell someone about dating violence victimization? Violence Against Women. Berman, S. L., Kurtines, W. M., Silverman, W. K., & Serafini, L. T. (1996). The impact of exposure to crime and violence on urban youths. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 66(3), 329–336. Boldero, J., & Fallon, B. (1995). Adolescent help-seeking: What do they get help for and from whom? Journal of Adolescence, 18, 193–209. Callahan, M. R., Tolman, R. M., & Saunders, D. G. (2003). Adolescent dating violence victimization and psychological well-being. Journal of Adolescent Research, 18(6), 664–681. Carlson, B. E. (1990). Adolescent observers of marital violence. Journal of Family Violence, 5, 285–299. Dunham, K., & Senn, C. Y. (2000). Minimizing negative experiences: Women’s disclosure of partner abuse. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 15(3), 251–261. Fallon, B. J., & Bowles, T. (1999). Adolescent help-seeking for major and minor problems. Australian Journal of Psychology, 51(1), 12–18. Foshee, V. A., Linder, G. F., Bauman, K. E., Langwick, S. A., Arriaga, X. B., Heath, J. L., et al. (1996). The Safe Dates project: Theoretical basis, evaluation, design, and selected baseline findings. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 12(5), 39–47. Furman, W., & Wehner, E. A. (1997). Adolescent romantic relationships: A developmental perspective. In S. Shulman, & W. A. Collins (Eds.), Romantic relationships in adolescence: Developmental perspectives (pp. 21–36). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Gamache, D. (1998). Domination and control: The social context of dating violence. In B. Levy (Ed.), Dating violence: Young women in danger (pp. 69–83). Seattle, WA: Seal Press. Gelles, R. J. (1991). Physical violence, child abuse, and child homicide: A continuum of violence, or distinct behaviors? Human Nature, 2(1), 59–72. Hilton, N. Z., Harris, G. T., & Rice, M. E. (2003). Adolescents’ perceptions of the seriousness of sexual aggression: Influence of gender, traditional attitudes, and self-reported experience. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 15(3), 201–214. Horton, A. L., & Johnson, B. L. (1993). Profile and strategies of women who have ended abuse. Families in Society, 74, 481–492.

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