Concentrated Disadvantage and Adolescent Dating Violence Victimization

Aubrey L. Spriggs, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Carolyn Tucker Halpern, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Amy H. Herring, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Although adolescent dating violence is a prevalent problem associated with many negative health outcomes, most research has focused on individual-level risk factors. Guided by social disorganization theory, we analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to explore how school features relate to physical dating violence victimization. In weighted multilevel random effects models, the variability in dating violence victimization risk attributable to differences between school contexts was very small - 7% for males and 5% for females. In bivariate analyses, school social disorder was positively related to dating violence victimization among females; among males, victimization was positively associated with school concentrated disadvantage and negatively associated with collective efficacy. However, after adjusting for individual-level socioeconomic status, school-level factors were unassociated with dating violence victimization for both genders. Differences between students in the same school appear more important than differences between school settings in explaining risk for dating violence victimization.