Whom Do Youth Fight With?: Results from the Boston Youth Survey 2008

When studying fighting, youth violence researchers often fail to ask whom youth fought with. Although many presume that the prevalence of “fighting” reflects the prevalence of “peer” fighting, it may include fighting between siblings and dating partners as well. We examined who youth fought with using data from the “Boston Youth Survey” (BYS), a biennial survey of a random sample of public high school students in Boston, MA (n=1,878). The BYS includes multiple items about aggressive behavior, including three measures on fighting within the past month. Each of the items instructs students to restrict their answers to fights with siblings, peers, or dating partners. In this presentation we identify what proportion of fights are with peers, and then quantify the co-occurrence of fighting with dating partners, peers, and siblings. Twenty-one percent reported a fight with a peer, 7.3% reported a fight with a dating partner, and 15.3% reported a fight with a sibling. Girls were more likely to report fights with siblings and intimates, whereas boys were more likely to report fights with peers. One-third (31%) of youth reported having been in a fight with a sibling, a peer, a dating partner, or any combination thereof; 68.9% of whom indicated that they fought with a peer. The prevalence of fighting among adolescents varies by the type of relationship that is specified and by sex. Therefore, we recommend specification of the relationships under study when surveying adolescents about fighting.