Two new measures of attitudes about the acceptability of teen dating aggression

Amy M. Smith Slep, Michele Cascardi, Sarah Avery-Leaf, K. Daniel O'Leary

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Aggression in dating relationships is associated with attitudes that justify its use. Attitudes about dating aggression are targeted by prevention efforts, contributing to a need to measure these attitudes sensitively, accurately, and multidimensionally. We describe two new measures of attitudes about aggression, each tapping different attitudinal components, and compare their psychometric properties with an existing scale. The 1st assesses attitudes about physical aggression in provocative situations. The 2nd taps attitudes about verbally aggressive, controlling, and jealous tactics against a dating partner. Data from 2,313 high school students were factor analyzed and cross-validated for each new scale, Compared with an existing measure, the scales had comparable levels of reliability and validity and improved response distributions. A 2nd-order factor analysis lends support to a multidimensional view of attitudes about dating aggression.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)306-318
Number of pages13
JournalPsychological assessment
Volume13
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2001

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Clinical Psychology
  • Psychiatry and Mental health

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