Assessing the Association Between Neighbourhood Sociodemographic Characteristics and Adolescent Dating Violence

Dating violence is highly prevalent among teenagers and victims are likely to suffer from health consequences. Despite growing research on dating violence determinants, neighbourhood-level factors have been overlooked. This study aimed at (1) estimating associations between neighbourhood sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., socioeconomic status, single parenthood, residential instability, and ethnocultural diversity) and dating violence, and (2) exploring the scale sensitivity of these estimations. Data from the Québec Health Survey of High School Students (2016–2017) were used to measure psychological and physical/sexual dating violence (perpetration and victimization). For each participant, egocentric neighbourhoods were operationalized using network buffers of different radii. Neighbourhoods’ sociodemographic characteristics were measured using data from the Canada Census 2016. Findings suggest that neighbourhood sociodemographic characteristics are associated with dating violence and that such associations are sensitive to scale. Further, these associations vary by gender and the form of dating violence considered. Our results suggest that implementing neighbourhood-level interventions could contribute to reducing dating violence.