Experiences of psychological and physical aggression in adolescent romantic relationships: Links to psychological distress☆
Section snippets
Method
The present research is a secondary analysis of existing data (Jouriles et al., 2005). Participants in this research were the same as those in Jouriles et al., and there is overlap in the measures used. Consequently, the description of the participants, procedures, and several of the measures is the same as in Jouriles et al.
Descriptive data and preliminary considerations
On the CADRI, 91% (n = 114) of participants reported experiencing at least one act of psychological aggression and 27% (n = 34) reported experiencing at least one act of physical aggression in the previous 8 weeks. On average, there were 10.6 (SD = 8.56) acts of psychological aggression and 1.1 (SD = 2.47) acts of physical aggression reported, t (125) = 13.65, p ≤ .001.
On the RVI, almost all of the adolescents reported experiencing at least one act of psychological aggression (96%; n = 120) and slightly less
Discussion
As expected, adolescents’ experiences of psychological and physical relationship aggression were both positively correlated with adolescents’ psychological distress, although the pattern of correlations was not consistent across different symptoms of psychological distress or the two methods by which relationship aggression was measured (retrospective and cumulative). Psychological aggression, but not physical aggression, was uniquely related to psychological distress when both forms of
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This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA13228).