A Primer for Preventing Teen Dating Violence? The Representation of Teen Dating Violence in Young Adult Literature and Its Implications for Prevention

Abstract

Teen dating violence (TDV) is a significant public health issue. Preventing TDV requires attention to risk and protective factors across ecological system levels. The media is one of the primary cultural drivers of societal-level social scripts about the causes of TDV. Framing theory asserts that the media’s portrayal of social issues, including what contextual information is included and/or excluded, affects individual-level attitudes about TDV and potential policy responses. This study investigates the representation of TDV in young adult (YA) literature, a media genre that is marketed to adolescent audiences. Data include all YA novels (N = 8) that have a primary focus on TDV. Texts were analyzed systematically using thematic content analysis methods. Results indicate that the antecedents of TDV were portrayed as being related to victim personal characteristics such as inexperience in relationships and low self-esteem. Rather than underscoring how societal-level factors contribute to TDV, perpetration was seen as stemming from family dysfunction and mental health issues. These results underscore how the structural determinants of TDV have been overshadowed in the media’s portrayal of TDV, in favor of narrow portrayals of victimization and perpetration. Implications for TDV prevention programs including the importance of media literacy are discussed.

Keywords

teen dating violence young adult literature framing theory media representations prevention

Teen dating violence (TDV), which includes a pattern of controlling and coercive behaviors, from physical abuse to verbal abuse to social isolation in adolescent romantic relationships, continues to be a significant public health issue. Violence against women, including TDV, is a frequent storyline across various media genres. For example, one of the longest running evening television dramas, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, chronicles stories that purport to be “ripped from the headlines” accounts of violence against women and children. Entertainment magazines describe “it happened to me” stories that feature young women who escaped the grip of an abusive partner (Thill & Dill, 2009). Among top grossing young adult (YA) novels, Meyer’s The Twilight Saga has been critiqued for “romanticizing” abusive relationship behaviors between the protagonist and her romantic partners (Borgia, 2014). While it is easy to disregard these stories as “fluff and nonsense” (Thill & Dill, 2009), the media has been implicated as a “persuasive super peer” (J. D. Brown, Halpern, & L’Engle, 2005), which has the potential to influence individuals’ (particularly adolescents’) attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of social issues including TDV (Meloy & Miller, 2009). The media has also been described as one of the primary “cultural supports” (Stark, 2009, p. xiii) that produces, recapitulates, and reifies social scripts about the causes, consequences, and appropriate collective social actions in response to violence against women and girls (Bronstein, 2008; Conley & Ramsey, 2011; Howe, 1997).

YA novels are the fastest growing sector of published books (Milliot, 2015), with YA novels such as The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent, and The Hunger Games grossing record-breaking national and international sales. On average, teens spend 25 min a day reading books for pleasure, with young women reading more than playing video games (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010). Although young men consume realistic YA literature, the primary market and consumers of this genre of literature are young women aged 12 and older (Nilsen, Blasingame, Donelson, & Nilsen, 2013). Therefore, the demographic of readers often includes preteens, as well as older adolescents. It also should be noted that with the growing popularity of YA literature, the appeal of these novels has expanded to adult women (Diaz, 2015).

Although novels are fictional, readers often subconsciously interpret the messages in books as truthful portrayals of reality (Carlyle, Scarduzio, & Slater, 2014; Petraglia, 2007; Strange & Leung, 1999). Genre fiction, such as YA novels, employs literary devices “that allow the reader . . . to disappear into the story, to experience the emotions that are intended by the writer” (Oatley & Gholamain, 1997, p. 703). These qualities make YA fiction an important emerging media arena that is influential in teaching adolescent readers, predominantly young women, about dating relationships and facilitates critical thinking about the societal structures and institutions that both foster and perpetuate those issues (Curwood, 2013). Given the enormous popularity of this genre of literature, the current study investigates how YA literature represents the antecedents of TDV.

The Pervasiveness of TDV in the United States

Between 10% and 25% of adolescents have experienced some form of physical violence within a dating relationship (Bryant, 2008; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013; Howard, Wang, & Yan, 2007), and 33% of adolescents are estimated to have experienced nonphysical types of abuse such as mental or verbal abuse (Coker et al., 2014). Although TDV affects teens from all demographic groups, evidence suggests that individuals from underrepresented minority groups (particularly African American teens) are at disproportionately high risk (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013; Racine & Zeytinoglu, 2012). Teens who have endured TDV often experience greater incidences of negative mental health outcomes such as depression, eating disorders, posttraumatic stress, suicidal ideation (Bonomi et al., 2006; Carbone-Lopez, Kruttschnitt, & Macmillan, 2006), and adverse physical health outcomes (Basile & Black, 2011; Pico-Alfonso, Garcia-Linares, Celda-Navarro, Herbert, & Martinez, 2004). These correlates reinforce the seriousness of TDV for adolescent women.

Despite the mental and physical health risks associated with TDV, some of the behavioral warning signs of abuse may seem normative to YAs (Murphy & Smith, 2010). Studies have documented that youth have accepting attitudes about the use of possessive and controlling behaviors in dating relationships (Murphy & Smith, 2010) and minimize the lethal potential of TDV (Chung, 2007). Furthermore, YAs, like older people, subscribe to beliefs that attribute responsibility to TDV victims for leaving abusive relationships (Worden & Carlson, 2005). In a representative sample of college students, for example, 77% of college-aged survey respondents reported that women could find a way to get out of an abusive relationship if they really wanted to (Nabors, Dietz, & Jasinski, 2006).

Preventing TDV

Frameworks for preventing TDV victimization and perpetration have evolved to be inclusive of risk and protective factors across multiple interacting and mutually reinforcing micro, mezzo, and macro ecological system levels (Casey & Lindhorst, 2009; Heise, 1998). Although upstream factors at the macro and mezzo system levels have been identified as important locations for primary prevention approaches to reducing gender-based violence, they have been underinvestigated compared with individual-level correlates and risk factors (Taylor, Sullivan, & Farrell, 2015; Vagi et al., 2013). At the micro and mezzo levels, risk factors for TDV include exposure to family violence, having experienced child abuse (Mbilinyi et al., 2012; Prothrow-Stith & Davis, 2010; Vezina & Hebert, 2007), having individual-level beliefs and attitudes about the acceptability of using violence (Heise, 1998), substance abuse, mental health issues including depression, perpetration of abuse in prior romantic relationships (Vagi et al., 2013), peer norms (Capaldi, Dishion, Stoolmiller, & Yoerger, 2001; Foshee et al., 2013; Reeves & Orpinas, 2012; Simon, Miller, Gorman-Smith, Orpinas, & Sullivan, 2010; Taylor et al., 2015), exposure to community violence (Gagne, Lavoie, & Hebert, 2004; O’Keefe & Treister, 1998), levels of neighborhood connectedness (Vezina & Hebert, 2007), and the percentage of neighborhood disadvantage (Spriggs, Halpern, & Martin, 2009; Vezina & Hebert, 2007).

At the macro level, strategies to prevent TDV perpetration and victimization are directed toward the upstream structures of society (Allen, Larsen, & Walden, 2011). These structures include the law, social welfare resources, economic practices, and the media. Early feminist activists such as Yllo and Bograd (1988) and Schecter (1982) situated gender inequality, in the form of the systematic devaluing of women economically, socially, and politically, as being central to understanding and ultimately preventing intimate partner violence (IPV). Therefore, approaches to prevent IPV at the societal level include economic, social, and policy approaches to improving gender equality and a viable social safety net; challenging gender-based social norms that prescribe rigid gender roles and endorse male violence; school-based prevention activities with children and youth; ameliorating poverty; and improving women’s access to capital and vital social services (World Health Organization [WHO], 2009). The representation of micro-, mezzo-, and macro-level determinants of TDV is important because they can influence individuals’—including youths’—attitudes, norms, and responses to this complex social issue.

Theoretical Foundation—How the Media Frames, Reproduces, and Messages Social Issues

Framing theory describes the media’s use of consistent patterns in how it organizes, categorizes, and delineates social phenomena (Campbell & Townsend, 2011). Badour, Feldner, Babson, Blumenthal, and Dutton (2013) defined media framing as a “process by which relevant information is selected and organized around a central theme for the purpose of creating a coherent storyline” (p. 453). Media frames influence public understanding of social issues in four distinct ways: (a) influencing how social issues are conceptualized and operationalized, (b) prescribing specific preconceived solutions, (c) identifying narrow causes of social issues, and (d) assigning moral judgments (Kuypers, 2009). As any given social issue can be framed in a multitude of ways, the media acts as a filter by selectively including certain elements of social issues at the cost of excluding other potentially contradictory information (Basile et al., 2006; Campbell & Townsend, 2011).

In terms of the media’s representation of IPV, media frames operate through use of specific language about victims and perpetrators and presenting contextual information that is deemed relevant to understanding the situation (Campbell & Townsend, 2011). Regardless of the accuracy of these frames, the media has tremendous potential to facilitate and/or inhibit public understanding of social issues (Bullock & Cubert, 2002), shape attitudes regarding the cause(s) of social issues (Berns, 2001; Zinzow & Thompson, 2011), and influence potential policy responses. In this way, the media can affect both individual-level beliefs and attitudes and, at the societal level, policy responses and social action (de Vreese, 2005). It is important to underscore that individuals, including adolescents, are not merely passive consumers of media, and indeed, they likely filter their perceptions of TDV through preexisting schema. However, across the literature on framing theory, there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that the media persuasively influences individuals’ beliefs and attitudes about social issues (Kuypers, 2009).

The investigation of portrayals of IPV/TDV in fictional novels has been limited. Arriaga and Foshee (2004) and Dutton (2006) chronicled multiple examples of IPV, including stalking, intimidation, and sexual coercion, that figure prominently in popular fiction; however, more thorough analyses, including an investigation of the societal representation of IPV and TDV, are nonexistent. Therefore, across media genres (including newspapers, magazines, and television), IPV has been framed in the following ways: minimizing the seriousness of IPV, including romanticizing the abuse (Carlyle et al., 2014; Gillespie, Richards, Givens, & Smith, 2013; Olson, 2013; Rothman et al., 2012; Thaller & Messing, 2014); reporting on elements of victims’ behavior, including insinuating that they have the agency to leave the relationship (Campbell & Townsend, 2011; Conoscenti & McNally, 2006; Fairbairn & Dawson, 2013; Howe, 1997; Meyers, 1997; Miller, 2001; Mills, 2003; Mouilso, Fischer, & Calhoun, 2012; Schnurr & Lohman, 2013; Shorey, Cornelius, & Bell, 2008); and focusing on the pathology associated with the individual behaviors of perpetrators (Bullock & Cubert, 2002; Carlyle et al., 2014; Lenahan, 2009; Olson, 2013; Poon, 2011).

The ramifications of these types of framing include suggesting that victims are in some way culpable for their abuse or are to blame for staying in abusive relationships, reinforcing societal stereotypes and myths about IPV including who can be victimized and who perpetrates abuse, divorcing social issues from their broader social contexts, and minimizing the role the larger society plays in promoting women’s safety and enforcing perpetrator accountability (Campbell, Lichty, Sturza, & Rais, 2006; Campbell & Townsend, 2011; Miller, 2001; Worden & Carlson, 2005). Given that the general public often believes that victims of intimate partner violence can “just leave” abusive relationships (Worden & Carlson, 2005), an analysis of media frames provides a vital interpretive lens for deconstructing and decoding dominant social explanations about, and solutions to, TDV (Campbell & Townsend, 2011).

Purpose of the Study

Through an analysis of YA literature that features TDV as a prominent theme, this study describes how the antecedents of TDV are depicted in this media genre that is intentionally created and marketed to adolescent women. The following research questions will be addressed:

Research Question 1: How are the root causes of TDV framed in YA literature?

Research Question 2: What frames are employed to discuss victims’ entry into abusive relationships and perpetrators’ use of abusive behaviors?

Method

This section will briefly overview YA literature, review the process of developing the sample of YA novels, and detail the analytic methods employed in this study.

Study Context

The data in this study were drawn from a subgenre of YA literature titled “realistic” YA literature or the “problem novel.” Realistic YA literature is one of the top grossing and highly reviewed types of YA fiction (Koss & Teale, 2009). The problem novel aims to chronicle “true-to-life” social issues such as eating disorders, family violence, and bullying (Bucher & Hinton, 2010; Carbone-Lopez et al., 2006; Nilsen et al., 2013). These books seek to facilitate meaning making about real-world problems, educate about social issues, and empower young readers (Bucher & Hinton, 2010).

Data and Sample

No preexisting list of YA novels that focus on TDV is available. We used three strategies to develop the sample: (a) searching reviews of YA novels in academic databases; (2) combing online compendiums of popular fiction, specifically, Amazon.com and two YA-focused websites, teenreads.com and School Library Journal; and (c) consulting with a YA librarian at the local library in a large U.S. city and a research librarian in the School of Information Studies at a large University. For the first two approaches, we used the following search terms: YA literature, dating abuse, TDV, relationship abuse, partner violence, and relationship problems.

Through these search strategies, we identified eight YA novels that were published in a 10-year period between 2004 and 2014. All of these novels are examples of realistic YA literature. The inclusion criteria for this sample were:

The novels were written and published in English because that is the investigators’ primary language.

The novels were published in the United States because that is the authors’ country of origin and residence. This decision was made because we wanted to share the same cultural context that the books were created in, so some of the “high inferences” were not lost cross-culturally.

The central plot of the novel focused primarily on the experience of TDV.

The novels were catalogued as YA and were in circulation in at least one of the five largest public library systems in the United States. Large was defined by the number of volumes in circulation in the branches and research collections (American Library Association, 2012). We focused on books in circulation at large library systems because they are likely to be books that many libraries hold, and therefore that many teens would have access to and potentially read. Therefore, all self-published novels were excluded.

The final sample included eight novels that averaged 250 pages. Their titles, authors, and publishing information have been summarized in Table 1. These novels were analyzed in their entirety.

Table 1.

Books Reviewed and Analyzed.

Title	Author	Date of publication	Publisher, location
1. Bitter End	Jennifer Brown	2012	Little, Brown, New York
2. Stay	Deb Caletti	2011	Simon Pulse, New York
3. Dreamland	Sarah Dessen	2004	Penguin Group, New York
4. Pieces of Us	Margie Gelbwasser	2012	Flux, Woodbury, MN
5. But I Love Him	Amanda Grace	2011	Flux, Woodbury, MN
6. Bad Boy	Dream Jordan	2012	St. Martin’s Griffin, New York
7. Rage: A Love Story	Julie Anne Peters	2009	Alfred A. Knopf, New York
8. Breaking Beautiful	Jennifer Shaw Wolf	2012	Walker & Company, New York

Data Analysis

This analysis involved an exploratory thematic content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) that unfolded in three distinct steps. The first step involved reading and screening each novel to determine whether it met the threshold for inclusion in the sample. The second step involved systematically coding electronic transcripts of each novel using the qualitative analysis software Dedoose version 5.1.26. The lead researcher initially analyzed one novel, which involved a focused coding and clustering of concepts into categories. This allowed the development of a codebook that included all codes, categories, and definitions of these concepts. The codebook was used to analyze the remainder of the novels, with additions made as needed. Themes were generated through memoing about concepts that appeared across the sample of novels, while making sure to note outlying constructs (Saldana, 2009). To isolate themes that were consistent across the entire sample, matrices were created for each novel to facilitate both within- and across-novel case analyses (Ayres, Kavanaugh, & Knafl, 2003).

Results

After presenting the demographic characteristics of the sample of novels, we will describe the emergence of three primary thematic frames that were employed to explain the lead character’s entry into abusive relationships. These frames include prior victim vulnerability, victim poor decision making, and perpetrator personal issues. Table 2 describes how these themes were represented across the novels. As a note of clarification, for the remainder of this article, the terms protagonist¹ (i.e., the central character in a piece of fiction) and victim will be used interchangeably and the term perpetrator will be employed to describe the protagonist’s abusive partner.

Table 2.

The Prevalence of Frames Across Cases.

	Bitter End by J. Brown	Stay by Caletti	Dreamland by Dessen	Pieces of Us by Gelbwasser	But I Love Him by Grace	Bad Boy by Jordan	Rage: A Love Story by Peters	Breaking Beautiful by Shaw Wolf
Entry into victimization
Enduring a personal/family tragedy	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Inexperience in relationships	X		X		X	X	X	X
Low self-esteem/diminished self-worth	X	X	X	X		X	X
Agency/poor choices	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Explaining perpetration of teen dating violence
Wounded	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Family history of violence	X		X	X	X	X	X	X
Mentally ill/crazy	X	X			X	X	X

Demographic Description of the Perpetrators and Victims in the Sample

To contextualize these findings, we will start with a brief description of the demographic characteristics of the victims and perpetrators in this sample.

Victim demographics

Discernable consistencies emerged across the novels in terms of the protagonist’s demographics. All of the victims were identified as female. Of the eight books reviewed, seven of the victims were White and upper or middle class. Class was an interpretive determination based on the author’s descriptions of the type of home the character lived in, their parents’ or guardians’ occupations, and descriptions of their neighborhoods. These indicators of class were derived from the socioeconomic position index (SEPI) developed by the Harvard Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project (Krieger et al., 2003). The novel that diverged most dramatically from these homogeneous victim descriptions was Jordan’s Bad Boy. In this novel, the protagonist Kate, who was African American, was involved in the foster care system and lived in a group home in an urban New York City neighborhood. All of the relationships depicted were heterosexual, except for the portrayal of a same-sex relationship in Rage: A Love Story.

Perpetrator demographics

Compared with the construction of victims of TDV, there was more variation in the demographic representation of perpetrators. With the exception of the perpetrator in Bad Boy, all of the perpetrators were White, and three of them (Reeve in Rage: A Love Story, Connor in But I Love Him, and Alex in Pieces of Us) did not live in single-family homes (one benchmark of class) or in underresourced neighborhoods. Johanna, for example, describes how her girlfriend Reeve lived in a dilapidated home in a blighted community. However, five of the perpetrators (Rogerson in Dreamland, Trip in Breaking Beautiful, and Percy in Bad Boy) were described as being wealthy. Rogerson’s family, for instance, lived in a luxury housing development, and Trip’s family was described as being the most affluent in their small coastal community. With the exception of a female perpetrator in Rage: A Love Story, all of the perpetrators were characterized as male and heterosexual. The demographic backgrounds of perpetrators and victims provide a critical backdrop for analyzing popular portrayals of who is a victim or perpetrator of TDV, while also shedding light on how the antecedents of TDV are being messaged to young readers.

Representations of the Antecedents of TDV: Victim Vulnerability

All of the TDV victims in these novels were characterized as being in some way vulnerable to abuse. These vulnerabilities were constructed by characterizing the protagonists as having challenges in their families, predominantly the death of a parent, lack of experience in relationships, and victim low self-esteem. Each will be described below.

Victim vulnerability: Enduring a family tragedy

The most commonly portrayed family tragedy endured by a protagonist was the death of a parent, found in four of the eight novels. The protagonist Clara in Stay described the death of her own mother and alludes to the preponderance of family deaths in popular culture:

Yes, this story has a dead mother. Mine. She had a sudden aneurysm when I was barely four. Died before she could even get to a hospital. Dead mothers have become a story cliché thanks to Disney movies and novel writers. All the dead mothers in books, you’d think it was a common occurrence. (Caletti, 2011, p. 8)

For the lead characters in Bitter End, But I Love Him, and Rage: A Love Story, their losses are compounded by rendering their remaining parental figure emotionally incapacitated. For instance, the protagonist Ann in But I Love Him described how, before her father died, “her mother was a good mom. She was everything I ever needed or wanted. And cruel reality stole her from me, and she became something else, and I became no one to her . . .” (Grace, 2011, p. 214).

For the four novels that did not involve the death of a parent, the majority of the protagonists endured other types of fractured families. Kate, the lead character in Bad Boy, was involved in the foster care system because she was “abandoned . . . before I could even walk” (Jordan, 2012, p. 28), and the protagonist’s father in Breaking Beautiful was absent on frequent military deployments. In Dreamland, after the lead character Caitlin’s older sister Cass ran away from home, her family was absorbed in coping with her absence. As Caitlin’s internal monologue revealed,

So far everyone who had noticed something was different in me had been distracted enough by their own problems . . . my mother with Cass . . . that [she] accepted my easy explanations about falling or clumsiness and didn’t look too closely . . . (Dessen, 2004, p. 175)

In this passage, it is made explicit that Caitlin’s abuse was overshadowed by her sister’s absence, thus implying that her parents’ distraction contributed to overlooking her changed demeanor and physical signs of abuse.

Victim vulnerability: Inexperienced in relationships

The majority of lead characters in this sample of YA novels were depicted as being inexperienced in relationships. For instance, in six of the eight novels, the perpetrator was their first relationship. The notable exceptions were the lead characters in Stay, and Pieces of Us who had some experience in previous relationships, though all considered their current (abusive) boyfriend as their first “true love.” In addition, with the exception of Katie in Pieces of Us, they all were portrayed as passive “wallflowers” who waited for men to initiate the relationships. Being constructed as a wallflower illustrates a type of vulnerability because it infers that the protagonist had limited experience in romantic relationships. As the protagonist Ann epitomized in But I Love Him, “Guys just don’t ask me out like this. I’m not outgoing enough to be noticed. I’ve been on like, four dates in my whole life” (Grace, 2011, p. 229). Similarly, the protagonist Kate in Bad Boy is portrayed as not being the recipient of male attention but rather a passive spectator of her friends’ relationships. Kate described her jubilation at finally getting asked out on a date. She narrated, “I hung up the phone, grinning, my heart fluttering. So many times I had to overhear Marlon talking sweet nothings to Felicia [her best friend], while I had nothing. Now I had something, a real relationship” (Jordan, 2012, p. 74). In addition to reinforcing normative social scripts about gender roles in dating relationships, this characterization of victims as disempowered wallflowers creates a rationale for young women’s entry into abusive relationships due to their innocence and inexperience in relationships.

Victim vulnerability: Low self-esteem

An additional frame employed to explain TDV victimization was the protagonists’ low self-esteem and self-worth. This frame was apparent in six of the eight novels. In reflecting why she fell prey to her boyfriend’s abuse, Kate in Bad Boy concludes, “Obviously my self-esteem wasn’t where it should have been; so I needed to raise it higher, out of reach from haters and abusers” (p. 189), and in a conversation with the other young women in her group home explains how “nobody is immune from abuse . . . [It depends] on where your self-esteem is on any given day” (Jordan, 2012, p. 190). Similarly, Johanna in Rage: A Love Story describes how being physically assaulted by her girlfriend is an external representation of her low feelings of self-worth. She recounts how, “The longer I look [in the mirror after the assault], the more I morph. The image of me, Johanna Lynch, my external reflection. My injury merges with the way I see myself” (Peters, 2009, p. 153). In other words, Johanna is articulating how her now injured external self is reconciled with her low internal self-perception.

Representations of the Antecedents of TDV: Victim Agency and Poor Choices

The majority of protagonists (n = 7) featured in this sample of YA novels were predominantly positioned as autonomous agents whose individual choices were at least partly responsible for the outcomes of their relationships. For instance, in Bad Boy, Kate’s foster caseworker chastises her for walking into her relationship with [her] eyes closed, “. . . This isn’t about luck it’s about poor choices” (Jordan, 2012, pp. 173-174). Similarly, after leaving her abusive partner and having the distance to make sense of her relationship, Clara in Stay concludes,

Christian and I had also been in our own book together, in a sea of his feelings, and I had stepped in, and I had willingly given myself up to the waves that carried me out. I had let him take me up and keep me in the ways he’d wanted. I had let this happen. (Caletti, 2011, p. 297, emphasis added)

Clara’s repeated use of I statements in this passage underscores how her self-perceived role is contributing to the abusive outcome of her relationship. Kate in Bad Boy also takes enormous personal responsibility for being in her relationship. For instance, she states, “This was my battle that I had to fight. I got myself into this mess; I had to get myself out” (Jordan, 2012, p. 167). These depictions of victims of TDV as autonomous agents who just need to be more discerning when entering into romantic relationships showcases another individual-level frame that focuses on what the victim could have done differently to avoid being in an abusive relationship. The utilization of this frame is noteworthy because it is another tactic for messaging victim culpability for her treatment in abusive relationships. In other words, if the protagonists had made better decisions, she could have avoided being involved with an abusive partner.

However, it could also be interpreted that framing victims as having some control over the outcomes of their relationships is a celebration of victim resiliency and strength; however, these are not narratives of personal empowerment. These renderings of TDV victims should be construed as cultural narratives that imply that victims have a “choice” to be in abusive relationships.

Representations of the Antecedents of TDV: Perpetrator Personal Issues

In this sample of YA novels, the root of men’s violence is exclusively portrayed as originating from either modeling abusive behaviors in their homes or their own personal pathology. In the following section, we will discuss the three primary depictions of perpetrator personal issues that were framed as contributing to TDV: emotionally wounded, family history of violence, and mental health issues.

Perpetrator personal issues: Emotionally wounded perpetrators

Across the sample, all of the perpetrators were depicted as being in some way emotionally wounded. In Pieces of Us, for example, Katie’s boyfriend’s pain and anger are portrayed as originating from his difficult childhood, which included his father’s suicide, enduring physical abuse by his mother’s pimps and boyfriends, and experiencing maternal neglect. When Katie asked him “Penny for your thoughts?” he responded, “No, baby, you don’t want these thoughts” (Gelbwasser, 2012, p. 152), illustrating that his thoughts were too dark to want to share with her, whom he regarded as innocent and pristine. Similarly, the protagonist Clara’s boyfriend, Christian in Stay, is also portrayed as having significant emotional challenges. For example, as their relationship progressed, Clara became more aware of his “bottomless, clutching need” (p. 108), and she described how through their growing intimacy she “. . . pried the lid off of the dark places of another person, [she] had seen inside. Down deep. You don’t want to look at what’s rotting there” (Caletti, 2011, p. 108). This imagery of something rotting and festering constructs Christian as deeply wounded and damaged. Similarly, Johanna’s girlfriend Reeve, in Rage: A Love Story, is characterized as troubled, utilizing self-harm behaviors, prone to violent outbursts, and coming from a home where she endured physical and sexual abuse. Across these novels, the only environmental setting that is portrayed as being a causal social determinant of TDV perpetration, and victimization for that matter, is dysfunction in the family unit.

Perpetrator personal issues: Family history of violence

To provide a rationale for perpetrators’ abusive behaviors and to partially explain the sources of their emotional wounds, the majority of authors (n = 7) located perpetrators in abusive homes with the presence of domestic violence and/or child abuse. The only novel in which family violence was not present in the life of the perpetrator was Stay. Incidents in Dreamland and Breaking Beautiful illustrate the connection between perpetuating abuse and early childhood exposure to abuse. Caitlin, the protagonist in Dreamland, for instance, reflects,

There were some times—when things got bad—that I saw something flash across Rogerson’s face, like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. . . . I wondered if he was thinking of his father, and the marks he’s left behind. (Dessen, 2004, p. 189)

Likewise, in But I Love Him, Ann stated, “I know it’s not the whole Connor. He’s still ruled by things his dad has done, by the past he has lived, by his anger” (Grace, 2011, p. 31). At a later point, the protagonist in But I Love Him concluded that her boyfriend “is a product of his childhood” (Grace, 2011, p. 64). Furthermore, in Breaking Beautiful, the protagonist connected her boyfriend’s abusive behaviors to his mistreatment at home. As she described,

I recognized [Trip’s father’s voice] from the times I cowered in Trip’s truck while the walls of his house shook with one of Mr. Phillip’s episodes. Trip hated going to his house. Hated it. I hated it, too, because after a fight with his dad I could never predict whether Trip would be needy or just angry. (Shaw Wolf, 2012, p. 157)

These direct statements back to the perpetrators’ unhealthy home lives are provided to help the reader connect these early childhood experiences with their current use of abusive behaviors.

Perpetrator personal issues: Mental health issues

Some of the perpetrators (n = 5) were also characterized as being mentally ill or “crazy.” The only perpetrator who was not described as mentally ill was Alex in Pieces of Us. The other perpetrators’ mental instability was exemplified by their self-harm behaviors or suicidal ideation. The perpetrator in Stay did not experience family violence, but he was framed as being mentally unstable. For instance, he was depicted “scratching his skin with his nails” (Caletti, 2011, p. 229) and leaving a rope in plain sight in his room as evidence of his suicidal ideation. Clara was portrayed throughout the arc of the narrative as gradually coming to terms with her boyfriend’s emotional instability. She states, “I knew something I didn’t know before. Knew, but didn’t want to know. It was possible that Christian was crazy” (Caletti, 2011, p. 142). Rather than being labeled as an abuser, Christian is framed as suffering from “an obsession, and [Clara] was the object of it” (Caletti, 2011, p. 230). Similarly, the protagonist Ann in But I Love Him also confronts her boyfriend’s suicidal ideation and depression. He tells her, “I’m just so depressed. I want to end it all. My life” (Grace, 2011, p. 166) by jumping off a bridge. This behavior could be interpreted as a form of emotional manipulation, yet the author emphasizes the mental health concern, not its effects on the relationship. Behaviors associated with mental illness are used as commonsense explanations for the root causes of perpetrators’ abusive behaviors.

Discussion and Implications

This analysis reveals that the structural and macro-level determinants of TDV have been overshadowed in the framing of TDV in YA novels, in favor of an exclusive focus on individual-level vulnerabilities, personal deficits, family dysfunction, and young women’s poor decision making. The purpose of the following section is to summarize the primary findings regarding how these framings of TDV function to reify societal stereotypes about the antecedents of this social issue, and predominantly focus on individual-level causal mechanisms at the expense of more nuanced primary prevention narratives.

Reifying Societal Stereotypes

Through framing victims of TDV as inherently vulnerable or having low self-esteem and by constructing perpetrators of TDV as being emotionally wounded, having mental health issues, and being exposed to family violence in childhood, these authors are reinforcing, however unintentionally, some of the dominant social stereotypes and misconceptions about the root causes of TDV. For example, the general public often endorses stereotypes that victims of IPV can “just leave abusive” relationships and have internal deficits including low self-esteem, and assume that perpetrators must be suffering from a mental health issue (Nabors et al., 2006). In a review of Dessen’s Dreamland, one of the novels under investigation in this study, the School Library Journal concluded that “Dreamland is the secret story of many contemporary teen relationships, a finely drawn portrait of a young woman without a strong sense of self esteem” (Richmond, 2000, p. 228). This quote provides insight into how these depictions of victims of TDV are interpreted by readers. In short, the “problem” of TDV potentially gets reinterpreted as one of victims’ individual failings rather than a by-product of a broader social issue such as inadequate community-based responses or gender inequality.

It is important to underscore that these framings are not unique to YA novels; for example, perpetrators are constructed in very similar ways in the print media (Campbell & Townsend, 2011), in self-help books (Poon, 2011), and in the American cinema (Frus, 2001). Likewise, the consistency by which IPV and TDV are framed across media genres illustrates the narrow ways the mainstream media messages multifaceted social issues. Berns (2004) asserts,

The political story is more likely to elicit controversy, flak, and unrest. It is easier to have a “happy ending” in a story about a victim who solved her problem as opposed to the unsettling ending of a culture in need of change. (p. 159)

Individual-Level Framing of TDV

Beyond just reinforcing societal stereotypes, similar to other media genres that portrayed violence against women (Berns, 2004), the root causes of TDV were primarily located at the individual level, specifically emphasizing personal pathology, family malfunction, and victims’ character flaws—individual- and family-level explanations. Although individual-level factors such as perpetrators’ exposure to domestic violence in the home can contextualize perpetrators’ adoption of abusive behaviors, the privileging of these factors has the potential to obfuscate the structural and community-level determinants of TDV. In other words, when refracted through framing theory, this predominant focus on individual behaviors has the potential to detract from primary prevention efforts. This type of framing functions to both assign a moral judgment to the life circumstances, choices, and behaviors of adolescent victims of dating violence and potentially excuse the behavior of perpetrators. This type of individual-level framing of TDV is problematic, particularly for adolescents, because it has the potential to further stigmatize victims of TDV and blames them for their “choices, ” rather than shed light on the many structural barriers to safely exiting abusive relationships including the lack of emergency shelter options for minors.

Furthermore, by portraying victims as predominantly White and middle- or upper-middle class, these authors are overlooking how the macro-level social determinants of health (i.e., entrenched poverty, underresourced neighborhoods and schools, and social policies that retrench the social safety net) contribute to communities of color disproportionately enduring a higher burden of abuse. Even in Jordan’s Bad Boy, which featured an African American protagonist, the emphasis was placed on Kate’s personal deficits that allowed her to tolerate the abuse. Therefore, these upstream determinants of social inequality have been erased in the overall construction of vulnerability in this sample of YA novels.

Implications for Research and Practice

Given the preponderance of individual-level depictions of the antecedents of TDV displayed in YA literature (and across media genres), this research points to the importance of a renewed focus on the “macro” or social determinants of health in the media’s portrayal of the causes and lived experiences of violence against women. As the media framing of TDV is crucial for initiating collective actions in response to social issues and potentially influencing policy responses, forging partnerships between TDV advocacy groups and media outlets (including YA authors) would be a tangible first step in crafting a more nuanced and contextualized “storying” of TDV.

Although these efforts have been limited in YA literature, domestic violence advocacy organizations such as the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WSCADV) have forged innovative partnerships with local news outlets to encourage more in-depth and contextualized reporting of IPV. This collaboration has resulted in the development of a media toolkit titled Covering Domestic Violence: A Guide for Journalists and other Media Professionals. Please see http://wscadv2.org for more information.

Numerous scholars have underscored the need for teens to be critical and discerning consumers of the media (Klinker, 1999; Koss & Teale, 2009). As Klinker (1999) states, “We need to prompt young people to question the interpretation of the world that the media tries to sell them. They need to learn to be critics and creators of meaning for themselves” (p. 269). However, an important component of critical consciousness is understanding the root causes of social inequality and the role structural factors play in contributing to social issues (Jennings, Parra-Medina, Hilfinger Messias, & McLoughlin, 2006; Wallerstein & Bernstein, 1988), and providing the tools to “decode the system” (Stanton-Salazar, 2011, p. 1092). Therefore, for youth to be critical consumers of media, they need to have an understanding of the multilevel factors that contribute to social issues, including TDV. However, research has found that teens receive only marginal TDV prevention programming (Exner-Cortens, Eckenrode, & Rothman, 2013; Weisz & Black, 2010) and receive little scaffolding to deconstruct the media’s portrayal of TDV (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998).

In response to these issues, this research underscores the importance of teens receiving in-depth training on the antecedents of TDV, identifying the multitude of behaviors associated with TDV, understanding the responsibility of the entire community to respond to and interrupt TDV, and tools to deconstruct the media’s portrayal of TDV. When discussing the causes of TDV, curricula should include information about structural factors that contribute to gender and racial inequality and the perpetuation of TDV, with tangible examples of how these barriers make it difficult for adolescent victims to safely leave their relationships. In addition, teens need support in discussing how messages in their social environments may run counter to the information conveyed in TDV prevention programming. Given the enormity of societal messages about violence against women generally and TDV in particular, these conversations need to be “frequent and often” and occur at multiple developmentally appropriate times during adolescence (Nation et al., 2003).

Study Limitations

There are several limitations that are necessary to note. First, this study does not explore all YA literature, but rather novels that intentionally had content related to TDV. Therefore, these findings should not be generalized to the entire genre of YA literature. In addition, we sought to include novels that adolescents could reasonably access in the public library system; therefore, these findings are not necessarily relevant to self-published novels. Although every attempt was made to locate every YA novel that met the selection requirements, given that these novels are not catalogued in a uniform way, it is possible that some texts were inadvertently excluded. In terms of research methodology, a limitation of thematic content analyses is the emphasis on what is common across data sources, rather than outlying viewpoints and perspectives. Finally, this study does not assess or measure variations in how adolescents interpret or create meaning about the content of these novels; that would be an important area of future research.

Conclusion

It is clear that the media, vis-à-vis YA novels, is advancing a narrow portrayal of TDV that has the potential to reconstitute and attenuate the root causes of TDV. Bruner (1986) asserted that novels transport individuals to new and possible worlds. From this analysis, it is clear that young readers are transported to worlds where teens are abused, generally, by young men, because they have pronounced vulnerabilities and low self-esteem, but they still have a “choice” to be in that relationship. Perpetrators, on the other hand, are portrayed doing bad things, are rarely punished, and where their behavior, even if not acceptable, is at least partially understood because they are “crazy” and have been mistreated themselves. This is the world to which adolescent readers have been transported.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The lead author acknowledges the insights and revisions provided by: Taryn Lindhorst, Erin Casey, and Diane Morrison.

Authors’ Note

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award TL1TR000422.

Notes

Author Biographies

Heather L. Storer, PhD, LMSW, is an assistant professor at the Tulane School of Social Work. Dr. Storer’s research agenda focuses on identifying the multi-level determinants of dating violence and adolescent health promotion. Her current work explores the reciprocal relationship between youth attitudes and perceptions of teen dating violence and their social environments including their school, neighborhood, and media environments.

Katyayani R. Strohl, MSW, recently completed her masters in Social Work from the University of Washington. Her research interests include clinical approaches to working with youth in community-based sports and wellness programs.

References

Allen

N. E.

Larsen

S. E.

Walden

A. L.

(2011). An overview of community-based services for battered women. In Renzetti

C. M.

Edleson

J. L.

Kennedy Bergen

(Eds.), Sourcebook on violence against women (pp. 245-264). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

American Library Association. (2012). The nation’s largest libraries: A listing by volumes held. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet22.

Arriaga

X. B.

Foshee

V. A.

(2004). Adolescent dating violence: Do adolescents follow in their friends’ or their parents’ footsteps? Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19, 162-184.

Ayres

Kavanaugh

Knafl

K. A.

(2003). Within-case and across-case approaches to qualitative data analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 13, 871-883.

Badour

C. L.

Feldner

M. T.

Babson

K. A.

Blumenthal

Dutton

C. E.

(2013). Disgust, mental contamination, and posttraumatic stress: Unique relations following sexual versus non-sexual assault. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 27, 155-162.

Basile

K. C.

Black

M. C.

(2011). Intimate partner violence against women. In Renzetti

C. M.

Edleson

J. L.

Bergen

R. K.

(Eds.), Sourcebook on violence against women (pp. 111-131). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Basile

K. C.

Black

M. C.

Simon

T. R.

Arias

Brener

N. D.

Saltzman

L. E.

(2006). The association between self-reported lifetime history of forced sexual intercourse and recent health-risk behaviors: Findings from the 2003 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Journal of Adolescent Health, 39, e1-e7.

Berns

(2001). Degendering the problem and gendering the blame: Political discourse on women and violence. Gender & Society, 15, 262-281.

Bonomi

A. E.

Thompson

R. S.

Anderson

Reid

R. J.

Carrell

Dimer

J. A.

(2006). Intimate partner violence and women’s physical, mental, and social functioning. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 30, 458-466.

10.

Borgia

D. N.

(2014). Twilight: The glamorization of abuse, codependency, and white privilege. The Journal of Popular Culture, 47(1), 153-173.

11.

Bronstein

(2008). No more black and blue: Women against violence against women and the Warner Communications boycott, 1976-1979. Violence Against Women, 14, 418-436.

12.

Brown

(2012). Bitter end. New York: Little, Brown.

13.

Brown

J. D.

Halpern

C. T.

L’Engle

K. L.

(2005). Mass media as a sexual super peer for early maturing girls. Journal of Adolescent Health, 36, 420-427.

14.

Bruner

(1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

15.

Bryant

(2008). Relationships between exposure to rap music videos and attitudes toward relationships among African American youth. Journal of Black Psychology, 34, 356-380.

16.

Bucher

Hinton

(2010). Young adult literature: Exploration, evaluation, and appreciation. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

17.

Bullock

C. F.

Cubert

(2002). Coverage of domestic violence fatalities by newspapers in Washington State. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 17, 475-499.

18.

Caletti

(2011). Stay. New York: Simon Pulse.

19.

Campbell

Lichty

L. F.

Sturza

Rais

(2006). Gynecological health impact of sexual assault. Research in Nursing & Health, 29, 399-413.

20.

Campbell

Townsend

S. M.

(2011). Defining the scope of sexual violence against women. In Renzetti

C. M.

Edleson

J. L.

Bergen

R. K.

(Eds.), Sourcebook on violence against women (pp. 95-110). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

21.

Capaldi

D. M.

Dishion

T. J.

Stoolmiller

Yoerger

K. L.

(2001). Aggression toward female partners by at-risk young men: The contribution of male adolescent friendships. Developmental Psychology, 37, 61-73.

22.

Carbone-Lopez

Kruttschnitt

Macmillan

(2006). Patterns of intimate partner violence and their associations with physical health, psychological distress, and substance abuse. Public Health Reports, 121, 382-392.

23.

Carlyle

K. E.

Scarduzio

J. A.

Slater

M. D.

(2014). Media portrayals of female perpetrators of intimate partner violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 29, 2394-2417.

24.

Casey

Lindhorst

(2009). Toward a multi-level, ecological approach to the primary prevention of sexual assault. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 10, 91-114.

25.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013). High school risk behavior survey. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/intimatepartnerviolence/teen_dating_violence.html.

26.

Chung

(2007). Making meaning of relationships: Young women’s experiences and understandings of dating violence. Violence Against Women, 13, 1274-1295.

27.

Coker

A. L.

Clear

E. R.

Garcia

L. S.

Asaolu

I. O.

Cook-Craig

P. G.

Brancato

C. J.

Fisher

B. S.

(2014). Dating violence victimization and perpetration rates among high school students. Violence Against Women, 20, 1220-1238.

28.

Conley

T. D.

Ramsey

L. R.

(2011). Killing us softly? Investigating portrayals of women and men in contemporary magazine advertisements. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35, 469-478.

29.

Conoscenti

L. M.

McNally

R. J.

(2006). Health complaints in acknowledged and unacknowledged rape victims. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 20, 372-379.

30.

Curwood

J. S.

(2013). Redefining normal: A critical analysis of (dis)ability in young adult literature. Children’s Literature in Education, 44, 15-28.

31.

DeKeseredy

W. S.

Schwartz

M. D.

(1998). Measuring the extent of woman abuse in intimate heterosexual relationships: A critique of the Conflict Tactics Scales. Retrieved from http://stoprelationshipabuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/A-Critique-of-the-Conflict-Tactics-Scales.pdf

32.

Dessen

(2004). Dreamland. New York: Penguin Group.

33.

de Vreese

C. H.

(2005). News framing: Theory and typology. Information Design & Document Design, 13, 51-62.

34.

Diaz

(2015). YA: A Category for the Masses. But What About Teens? School Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.slj.com/2015/11/teens-ya/ya-a-category-for-the-masses-but-what-about-teens

35.

Dutton

D. G.

(2006). Rethinking domestic violence. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press.

36.

Exner-Cortens

Eckenrode

Rothman

(2013). Longitudinal associations between teen dating violence victimization and adverse health outcomes. Pediatrics, 131, 71-78.

37.

Fairbairn

Dawson

(2013). Canadian news coverage of intimate partner homicide: Analyzing changes over time. Feminist Criminology, 8, 147-176.

38.

Foshee

V. A.

Benefield

T. S.

McNaughton Reyes

H. L.

Ennett

S. T.

Faris

Chang

et al . (2013). The peer context and the development of the perpetration of adolescent dating violence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42, 471-486.

39.

Frus

(2001). Documenting domestic violence in American films. In Slocum

J. D.

(Ed.), Violence and American cinema (pp. 226-244). New York: Routledge.

40.

Gagne

M. H.

Lavoie

Hebert

(2004). Exploration of interrelations of different experiences of violence in the lives of young Quebecois girls. Revue de psychoéducation, 33, 41-60.

41.

Gelbwasser

(2012). Pieces of us. Woodbury, MN: Flux.

42.

Gillespie

L. K.

Richards

T. N.

Givens

E. M.

Smith

M. D.

(2013). Framing deadly domestic violence: Why the media’s spin matters in newspaper coverage of femicide. Violence Against Women, 19, 222-245.

43.

Grace

(2011). But I love him. Woodbury, MN: Flux.

44.

Heise

(1998). An integrated, ecological framework. Violence Against Women, 4, 262-290.

45.

Howard

D. E.

Wang

M. Q.

Yan

(2007). Psychological factors associated with reports of physical dating violence among U.S. adolescent females. Adolescence, 42, 311-324.

46.

Howe

(1997). “The war against women”: Media representations of men’s violence against women in Australia. Violence Against Women, 3, 59-75.

47.

Hsieh

H.-F.

Shannon

S. E.

(2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 15, 1277-1288.

48.

Jennings

L. B.

Parra-Medina

D. M.

Hilfinger Messias

D. K.

McLoughlin

(2006). Toward a critical social theory of youth empowerment. Journal of Community Practice, 14, 31-55.

49.

Jordan

(2012). Bad boy. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

50.

Kaiser Family Foundation. (2010). Generation M²: Media in the lives of 8- to 18-year-olds. Retrieved from https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/8010.pdf

51.

Klinker

J. J.

(1999). The pedagogy of the post-modern text: Aidan Chambers’s “The toll bridge.” The Lion and the Unicorn, 23, 257-270.

52.

Koss

M. D.

Teale

W. H.

(2009). What’s happening in YA literature? Trends in books for adolescents. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52, 563-572.

53.

Krieger

Chen

J. T.

Waterman

P. D.

Soobader

M. J.

Subramanian

S. V.

Carson

(2003). Choosing area based socioeconomic measures to monitor social inequalities in low birth weight and childhood lead poisoning: The Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project (US). Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 57, 186-199.

54.

Kuypers

J. A.

(2009). Rhetorical criticism: Perspectives in action. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

55.

Lenahan

P. M.

(2009). Intimate partner violence: What do movies have to teach us? International Review of Psychiatry, 21, 189-199.

56.

Mbilinyi

L. F.

Logan-Greene

P. B.

Neighbors

Walker

D. D.

Roffman

R. A.

Zegree

(2012). Childhood domestic violence exposure among a community sample of adult perpetrators: What mediates the connection? Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 21, 171-187.

57.

Meloy

Miller

(2009). Words that wound: Print media’s presentation of gendered violence. In Humphries

(Ed.), Women, violence, and the media (pp. 29-56). Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.

58.

Meyers

(1997). News coverage of violence against women: Engendering blame. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

59.

Miller

S. L.

(2001). The paradox of women arrested for domestic violence: Criminal justice professionals and service providers respond. Violence Against Women, 7, 1339-1376.

60.

Milliot

(2015, March). Publishers posted solid 2014 sales gains. Publishers Weekly, 262, 4-5.

61.

Mills

L. G.

(2003). Insult to injury. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

62.

Mouilso

Fischer

Calhoun

(2012). A prospective study of sexual assault and alcohol use among first-year college women. Violence and Victims, 27, 78-94.

63.

Murphy

K. A.

Smith

D. I.

(2010). Adolescent girls’ responses to warning signs of abuse in romantic relationships. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25, 626-647.

64.

Nabors

E. L.

Dietz

T. L.

Jasinski

J. L.

(2006). Domestic violence beliefs and perceptions among college students. Violence and Victims, 21, 779-795.

65.

Nation

Crusto

Wandersman

Kumpfer

K. L.

Morrissey-Kane

Davino

(2003). What works in prevention: Principles of effective prevention programs. American Psychologist, 58, 449-456.

66.

Nilsen

A. P.

Blasingame

Donelson

K. L.

Nilsen

(2013). Literature for today’s young adults. Boston, MA: Pearson.

67.

Oatley

Gholamain

(1997). Emotions and identification: Connections between readers and fiction. In Hjort

Laver

(Eds.), Emotion and the arts (pp. 263-281). New York: Oxford University Press.

68.

O’Keefe

Treister

(1998). Victims of dating violence among high school students: Are the predictors different for males and females? Violence Against Women, 4, 195-223.

69.

Olson

K. M.

(2013). An epideictic dimension of symbolic violence in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: Inter-generational lessons in romanticizing and tolerating intimate partner violence. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 99, 448-480.

70.

Peters

J. A.

(2009). Rage: A love story. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

71.

Petraglia

(2007). Narrative intervention in behavior and public health. Journal of Health Communication, 12, 493-505.

72.

Pico-Alfonso

M. A.

Garcia-Linares

M. I.

Celda-Navarro

Herbert

Martinez

(2004). Changes in cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone in women victims of physical and psychological intimate partner violence. Biological Psychiatry, 56, 233-240.

73.

Poon

M. K.

(2011). Beyond good and evil: The social construction of violence in intimate gay relationships. In Ristock

J. L.

(Ed.), Intimate partner violence in LGBTQ lives (pp. 102-130). Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis.

74.

Prothrow-Stith

Davis

R. A.

(2010). A public health approach to preventing violence. In Cohen

Chavez

Chehimi

(Eds.), Prevention is primary (pp. 323-350). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

75.

Racine

Zeytinoglu

(2012). African Americans and teen dating violence. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 40, 20-32.

76.

Reeves

P. M.

Orpinas

(2012). Dating norms and dating violence among ninth graders in Northeast Georgia: Reports from student surveys and focus groups. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 27, 1677-1698.

77.

Richmond

(2000). Review of the book Dreamland, by Dessen

School Library Journal, 46, 228.

78.

Rothman

E. F.

Nagaswaran

Johnson

R. M.

Adams

K. M.

Scrivens

Baughman

(2012). U.S. tabloid magazine coverage of a celebrity dating abuse incident: Rihanna and Chris Brown. Journal of Health Communication, 17, 733-744.

79.

Saldana

(2009). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Ltd.

80.

Schecter

(1982). Women and male violence. Boston, MA: South End.

81.

Schnurr

M. P.

Lohman

B. J.

(2013). The impact of collective efficacy on risks for adolescents’ perpetration of dating violence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42, 518-535.

82.

Shaw Wolf

(2012). Breaking beautiful. New York: Walker.

83.

Shorey

R. C.

Cornelius

T. L.

Bell

K. M.

(2008). A critical review of theoretical frameworks for dating violence: Comparing the dating and marital fields. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 13, 185-194.

84.

Simon

T. R.

Miller

Gorman-Smith

Orpinas

Sullivan

(2010). Physical dating violence norms and behavior among sixth-grade students from four U.S. sites. Journal of Early Adolescence, 30, 395-409.

85.

Spriggs

A. L.

Halpern

C. T.

Martin

S. L.

(2009). Continuity of adolescent and early adult partner violence victimization: Association with witnessing violent crime in adolescence. Journal of Epidemiological Community Health, 63, 741-748.

86.

Stanton-Salazar

(2011). A social capital framework for the study of institutional agents and their role in the empowerment of low-status students and youth. Youth & Society, 43(3), 1066-1109.

87.

Stark

(2009). Introduction to volume 4. In Stark

Buzawa

E. S.

(Eds.), Violence against women (pp. xxi-xxx). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

88.

Strange

J. J.

Leung

C. C.

(1999). How anecdotal accounts in news and in fiction can influence judgments of a social problem’s urgency, causes, and cures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 436-449.

89.

Taylor

K. A.

Sullivan

T. N.

Farrell

A. D.

(2015). Longitudinal relationships between individual and class norms supporting dating violence and perpetration of dating violence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 44, 745-760.

90.

Thaller

Messing

J. T.

(2014). (Mis)perceptions around intimate partner violence in the music video and lyrics for “Love the way you lie.” Feminist Media Studies, 14, 623-639.

91.

Thill

Dill

K. E.

(2009). Domestic violence in American magazines. In Stark

Buzawa

E. S.

(Eds.), Violence against women (pp. 81-104). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

92.

Vagi

K. J.

Rothman

E. F.

Latzman

N. E.

Teten Tharp

Hall

D. M.

Breiding

M. J.

(2013). Beyond correlates: A review of risk and protective factors for adolescent dating violence perpetration. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42, 633-649.

93.

Vezina

Hebert

(2007). Risk factors for victimization in romantic relationships of young women: A review of empirical studies and implications for prevention. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 8, 33-66.

94.

Wallerstein

Bernstein

(1988). Empowerment education: Freire’s ideas adapted to health education. Health Education Quarterly, 15, 379-394.

95.

Weisz

A. N.

Black

B. M.

(2010). Peer education and leadership in dating violence prevention: Strengths and challenges. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 19, 641-660.

96.

Worden

A. P.

Carlson

B. E.

(2005). Attitudes and beliefs about domestic violence: Results of a public opinion survey. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20, 1219-1243.

97.

World Health Organization. (2009). Violence prevention: The evidence. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/gender.pdf

98.

Yllo

Bograd

(1988). Feminist perspectives on wife abuse. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

99.

Zinzow

Thompson

(2011). Barriers to reporting sexual victimization: Prevalence and correlates among undergraduate women. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 2, 711-725.