Heather A. Sears

“If It Hurts You, Then It Is Not a Joke” Adolescents’ Ideas About Girls’ and Boys’ Use and Experience of Abusive Behavior in Dating Relationships

This study examined adolescents’ ideas about girls’ and boys’ use and experience of physical and psychological abuse in heterosexual dating relationships. Canadian high school students who were enrolled in Grades 9 and 11 took part in single-gender focus groups. Eight themes emerged from the analysis. The themes highlight the importance teenagers place on context for defining specific behaviors as abusive. They also underscore gender differences in the criteria adolescents use to make these judgments, in the forms of abusive behavior teenagers typically use in a dating relationship, and in the reasons for youths’ declining use of physical abuse and increasing use of psychological abuse. These views have important implications for future research and for programs targeting adolescent dating violence.

Predicting Mother–Adolescent Sexual Communication Using the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction:

Guided by the integrative model of behavioral prediction, we examined factors associated with more extensive mother–adolescent sexual communication. Participants were 303 mothers of young adolescents who completed a survey assessing their skills, attitudes about the outcomes of sexual health discussions, perceptions of social norms, self-efficacy, and sexual communication intentions at baseline (Time 1) and the extent of their sexual communication with their adolescent 6 months later (Time 2). A path analysis showed that, after accounting for the correlations among the four predictors and sexual communication at Time 1, intentions mediated the relationships between mothers’ skills, attitudes, and self-efficacy and the extent of their sexual communication with their adolescent. Attitudes also were related directly to mothers’ sexual communication. These results provide support for the utility of the integrative model of behavioral prediction for identifying parent characteristics that are related to more extensive parent–adolescent sexual communication and one mechanism by which these relationships may occur.