Severity of Dating Violence Among College Students

Over past ten years, reports of dating violence have increased dramatically especially among college and high school students. Research studies report that the percentage of teens who are victims of dating violence range from 20 to 65 %; with at least one incidence of violence occurring in 12 to 20 % of adolescent dating relationships. A controversy exists regarding who is the perpetrator of dating violence. One group of researchers has found that female students are more likely to be victims of dating violence when compared to male students; while another group has found that males report being victims of dating violence more frequently than females. There are two purposes of this research project: the first is to examine the severity of dating violence among college students located at a public university in New York State using the Violence against Women Scale/Severity of Violence against Men Scale; while the second is to determine the reliability of the Severity of Violence against Men Scale. This is needed as most scales for domestic or dating violence have be written to measure the violence from the female as victim point of view. This scale has been developed for use by both females and males as victims; however, the reliability for males is not readily available. Thus, the presentation will include a discussion of the findings regarding the severity of dating violence in both male and female college students and will compare the reliability of these scales for both male and female students.