Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #117860

Jacquelyn Campbell, PhD, RN, FAAN¹, Heidi Lary, MHS², Nina M. Fredland, MSN, RN-CS, FNP¹, Jessica Roberts, RN, BSN¹, Joan E. Kub, PhD APRN, BC¹, Phyllis Sharps, PhD, FAAN³, and Michele Mouttapa, PhD⁴. (1) School of Nursing, Johns Hopkins University, 525 N. Wolfe Street, Room 436, Baltimore, MD 2105-2100, 410-955-2778, jccampbel@son.jhmi.edu, (2) School of Nursing, Johns Hopkins, 511 North Washington, Baltimore, MD 21205, (3) Johns Hopkins University, School of Nursing, 525 N. Wolfe Street, Room 464, Baltimore, MD 21205, (4) Center for Health Disparities Solutions, Morgan State University, 2201 East Argonne Drive, Montebello Complex, Room 103-D, Baltimore, MD 21251-0001

Dating violence, a form of intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious problem among youth. Dating violence prevention programs in schools are relatively new, and few dating violence studies have focused on providing culturally specific prevention programs for young adolescents. This intervention study evaluated the effectiveness of a multifaceted, innovative arts based dating violence system change prevention project (“Respect Me”) for four (two intervention, two comparison) predominantly African-American inner city middle schools. Intervention components included teacher/staff training, a dating violence prevention curriculum, a theatre production, a visual arts project, a dating violence prevention website construction class, and discussion groups. Only students who reported having a boyfriend or girlfriend in the past year were included in the analytic sample of this study (n = 406). Students completed a self-administered survey in the Fall of 2003 and the Spring of 2004. Analyses were adjusted for gender and baseline levels of the outcome variable of interest. Relative to students in comparison schools, intervention school students reported significantly lower rates of physical victimization, and emotional and physical perpetration. Knowledge about and negative attitudes toward dating violence increased in intervention schools and decreased in control schools. Girls scored significantly higher on dating violence knowledge (p= .004) and endorsed less favorable attitudes toward boy/girl violence relative to boys. However, boys more often reported victimization and less frequent perpetration relative to girls.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify activities of a successful arts-based dating violence prevention program.
• Identify the effects of an arts-based intervention program on violence and its correlates.
• Identify gender difference in violent perpetration and victimization.

Keywords: Violence Prevention, Adolescents

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation