Safe Dates— Psychological Abuse Perpetration

1. Abstract

The Safe Dates—Psychological Abuse Perpetration Scale is a standardized, self-report psychometric instrument developed by Dr. Vangie A. Foshee and colleagues to assess non-physical, emotionally abusive, controlling, and manipulative behaviors committed by adolescents within romantic or dating relationships. Originating from the seminal evaluation of the Safe Dates dating violence prevention program, the scale comprises 14 behavioral items that evaluate the frequency of psychological aggression over a designated recall period (typically the past 6 to 12 months). Items encompass verbal insults, public humiliation, coercive monitoring, social isolation, jealousy induction, emotional manipulation, destruction of personal property, and veiled or thwarted physical threats (e.g., throwing an object that misses, starting to hit but stopping). Each item is rated on a 4-point response scale ranging from 0 (Never) to 3 (Very Often). A continuous composite score is derived by summing responses across all items (potential range: 0–42), with standardized categorical recoding schemes denoting severity: 0 indicates no perpetration, 1–5 indicates mild psychological abuse, 6–9 indicates moderate psychological abuse, and 10 or greater denotes severe psychological abuse perpetration.

Extensive psychometric investigations across diverse adolescent cohorts demonstrate robust internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently ranging between .80 and .88 across longitudinal waves. Factor-analytic studies support an overarching unidimensional construct of psychological maltreatment or closely aligned two-factor models delineating verbal/emotional degradation from restrictive/controlling behaviors. The instrument displays established construct, convergent, predictive, and discriminant validity, exhibiting strong positive correlations with physical dating violence perpetration, peer violence norms, hostile attribution biases, and conflict-resolution deficits, alongside anticipated negative correlations with relationship satisfaction and empathy. The scale remains a benchmark measurement tool in adolescent relationship research, public health program evaluations, school-based interventions, and clinical risk assessments.

2. Keywords

Safe Dates, psychological abuse perpetration, adolescent dating violence, emotional abuse, intimate partner violence, psychometrics, coercive control, relationship aggression, dating violence prevention, adolescent health psychology

3. Authors

The Safe Dates—Psychological Abuse Perpetration Scale was constructed, validated, and published by a multidisciplinary team of public health researchers, epidemiologists, and behavioral scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

• Vangie Ann Foshee, Ph.D. — Professor, Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Primary investigator of the Safe Dates Project, internationally recognized for research on adolescent risk behaviors, violence prevention, and family dynamics.
• Karl E. Bauman, Ph.D. — Late Professor Emeritus, Department of Maternal and Child Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Renowned methodologist in adolescent health, substance use, and behavioral trial design.
• Ximena B. Arriaga, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychological Sciences, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University. Expert in close relationship dynamics, intimate partner violence, attachment processes, and interpersonal communication.
• Ronald W. Helms, Ph.D. — Professor Emeritus of Biostatistics, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; founder of Rho, Inc. Specialist in longitudinal data analysis and clinical trial methodology.
• Gary G. Koch, Ph.D. — Professor of Biostatistics and Director of the Biometric Consulting Laboratory, Department of Biostatistics, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. World-renowned authority on categorical data analysis.
• G. Fletcher Linder, M.S. — Biostatistician and Research Associate, Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

4. Purpose

The Safe Dates—Psychological Abuse Perpetration Scale was conceived to address a critical empirical and clinical void in the study of adolescent romantic interactions: the absence of a developmentally sensitive, reliable, and standardized instrument to quantify non-physical abuse perpetration among youth. Prior to the development of the Safe Dates measurement suite, research into adolescent intimate partner violence predominantly relied on adaptations of instruments constructed for married adult populations, such as Murray Straus’s Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS). While foundational, adult-oriented instruments often failed to capture the unique developmental manifestations, communication modalities, and structural environments of adolescent relationships.

In clinical and diagnostic settings, the tool enables mental health practitioners, school psychologists, and adolescent counselors to identify early indicators of relationship dysfunction, coercive control, and hostile communication. Psychological abuse frequently serves as a gateway behavior or precursor to physical aggression, sexual assault, and severe stalking; identifying its emergence allows for targeted, early intervention before destructive behavioral trajectories become entrenched.

In epidemiological and public health research, the scale serves as an evaluative metric for behavioral interventions. It allows researchers to quantify baseline rates of non-physical aggression, track naturalistic shifts in relationship conduct across adolescence, and evaluate the efficacy of universal or indicated violence prevention curricula—such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognized Safe Dates Program. Furthermore, its continuous and categorical scoring architectures facilitate cross-study comparisons, meta-analyses, and structural equation modeling of multi-wave intervention trials.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct assessed by this instrument is psychological abuse perpetration in adolescent dating relationships. In relational psychopathology, psychological abuse—interchangeably termed emotional abuse, non-physical aggression, verbal aggression, or psychological maltreatment—is conceptualized as a repetitive pattern of non-physical acts, communications, and relational maneuvers designed to systematically demean, dominate, control, humiliate, or frighten an intimate partner.

Rather than conceptualizing abuse purely as isolated explosive episodes, modern psychometric theory approaches psychological maltreatment as a functional dynamic structured around several interconnected dimensions, all of which are reflected within the 14 items of the Safe Dates perpetration scale:

• Verbal and Emotional Degradation: Behaviors intended to wound the romantic partner’s self-esteem, self-efficacy, and emotional security. This includes targeted, intentional emotional distress (Item 2: “Said things to hurt their feelings on purpose”), public humiliation designed to erode social standing (Item 3: “Insulted them in front of others”), body shaming and attacks on physical appearance (Item 14: “Put down their looks”), and resurfacing historical vulnerabilities or past mistakes to induce guilt (Item 13: “Brought up something from the past to hurt them”).
• Dominance, Coercive Control, and Social Restriction: Behaviors aimed at reducing partner autonomy and enforcing interpersonal isolation. These items measure attempts to monopolize the partner’s time and social world (Item 5: “Would not let them do things with other people”), micromanagement and obsessive temporal monitoring (Item 12: “Made them describe where they were every minute of the day”), and rigid enforcement of cross-gender boundaries through gender-based relational policing (Item 7: “Told them they could not talk to someone of the opposite sex”).
• Relational and Emotional Manipulation: Covert, Machiavellian tactics designed to cultivate relationship insecurity, self-doubt, and asymmetric dependence. This dimension includes deliberate jealousy induction (Item 9: “Did something just to make them jealous”), explicit threats of abandonment or relational dissolution (Item 6: “Threatened to start dating someone else”), and externalizing blame or emotional projection (Item 10: “Blamed them for bad things I did”).
• Property Destruction and Proximal Physical Intimidation: Actions operating on the boundary between emotional maltreatment and physical violence. These include damaging the partner’s personal belongings (Item 1: “Damaged something that belonged to them”), near-miss ballistic gestures (Item 4: “Threw something at them that missed”), aborted physical assaults that serve as unambiguous displays of physical capacity and threat (Item 8: “Started to hit them but stopped”), and direct verbal threats of bodily harm (Item 11: “Threatened to hurt them”).

6. Theoretical Framework

The construction and validation of the Safe Dates—Psychological Abuse Perpetration Scale are rooted in an integration of three primary theoretical frameworks: Social Learning Theory, the Social Ecological Model, and Interpersonal Coercion Theory.

Bandura’s Social Learning Theory posits that interpersonal aggression is learned vicariously through the observation and imitation of familial models (e.g., parental domestic discord, sibling aggression) and peer groups, reinforced through anticipated relational rewards. In dating contexts, adolescents frequently reproduce the coercive, manipulative, or dismissive communication styles they have observed. The Safe Dates model assumes that psychological abuse is sustained by positive cognitive evaluations of aggression, normative beliefs that support gendered control, and deficiencies in adaptive conflict resolution and negotiation skills. By operationalizing these learned behaviors into distinct self-reported actions, the instrument provides an empirical baseline to measure the cognitive restructuring and skill acquisition targeted by preventive interventions.

The Social Ecological Model, articulated by Urie Bronfenbrenner and adapted by the CDC for violence etiology, contextualizes dating abuse across nested systems: individual (e.g., anger regulation, attributional bias), microsystemic (e.g., romantic dyad dynamics, peer group norms), exosystemic (e.g., school culture, neighborhood stability), and macrosystemic (e.g., traditional gender role socialization, societal tolerance of interpersonal violence). The Safe Dates scale measures behavior at the dyadic microsystem level while allowing researchers to evaluate how community- and school-level educational curricula disrupt microsystemic patterns of intimidation and domination.

Finally, Patterson’s Coercion Model and subsequent extensions to adolescent relationships emphasize that psychological abuse operates as an escalating system of reinforcement. Individuals perpetrate emotional abuse because it rapidly terminates an aversive state or secures partner compliance (negative and positive reinforcement). Over time, small acts of verbal hostility (such as insults or jealousy games) escalate into coercive surveillance and physical threats if the perpetrator finds them functional in maintaining relational hegemony.

7. Validity

The Safe Dates—Psychological Abuse Perpetration Scale has undergone comprehensive psychometric evaluation establishing multiple forms of validity across adolescent populations:

• Construct Validity: Construct validity was initially confirmed through the scale’s alignment with theoretical expectations during the primary evaluations of the Safe Dates randomized trial. As hypothesized, adolescents who endorsed positive attitudes toward dating violence, exhibited traditional gender-role stereotypes, reported high peer violence norms, and experienced deficits in emotional self-regulation scored significantly higher on psychological abuse perpetration.
• Convergent Validity: The instrument correlates strongly with validated measures of adolescent maladjustment and aggression. Cross-sectional and longitudinal evaluations indicate robust positive correlations between psychological abuse perpetration and physical dating violence perpetration (ranging from r = .45 to .62, p < .001). Furthermore, significant associations have been documented with general delinquency, school-based bullying, peer-directed physical fighting, and symptoms of conduct disorder.
• Predictive Validity: In prospective longitudinal analyses tracking cohorts across 1-year, 2-year, and 4-year follow-ups, baseline scores on the psychological abuse scale significantly predicted subsequent escalation to moderate and severe physical dating assault, sexual coercion, and mutual relational violence. Youths classified into the “moderate” or “severe” perpetration categories displayed multi-fold increases in relative risk for physical violence onset compared to non-perpetrators.
• Discriminant Validity: The scale differentiates successfully between psychological aggression and unrelated psychological constructs. Correlations between psychological abuse perpetration and generalized internalizing distress (such as depressive symptomology or social anxiety) remain low-to-moderate (typically r = .12 to .24), demonstrating that the instrument captures externalizing interpersonal antagonism rather than generalized psychological distress.

8. Reliability

The scale demonstrates strong internal consistency across varied adolescent age cohorts, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and geographic locales:

• Internal Consistency: In the foundational Safe Dates evaluation studies by Foshee and colleagues (1996, 1998), the 14-item instrument yielded high Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, typically documented between α = .80 and .88 across both baseline and post-test measurement waves. In subsequent independent replications involving large school-based samples, alpha values have consistently remained above the acceptable psychometric threshold of .80, indicating high item homogeneity and minimal measurement error.
• Test-Retest Stability: In untreated control cohorts assessed over 1-month and 6-month intervals, the instrument displayed moderate-to-high test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from .68 to .76), reflecting both the temporal stability of relational behavioral tendencies and the expected situational fluctuations inherent to transient adolescent romantic partnerships.
• Subgroup Invariance: Psychometric analyses evaluating reliability across demographic strata indicate equivalent internal consistency across biological sexes, with females exhibiting alpha coefficients of .81–.86 and males exhibiting alpha coefficients of .80–.87, establishing that the scale functions with comparable precision across genders.

9. Factor Analysis

Both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have been conducted to delineate the latent dimensionality of the Safe Dates—Psychological Abuse Perpetration Scale:

• Unidimensional Structure: In the initial validation work by Foshee et al., principal components analysis and common factor analysis supported a robust single-factor model. The dominant primary factor accounted for a substantial proportion of the total variance, with all 14 items exhibiting standardized factor loadings exceeding .40. Items tapping direct verbal degradation (e.g., Item 2, Item 3) and direct threats or intimidation (e.g., Item 8, Item 11) demonstrated the highest factor loadings, typically ranging from .55 to .74.
• Multidimensional Alternative Models: Subsequent investigations utilizing CFA have occasionally identified a two-factor correlated model that provides a marginal improvement in fit over the strict unidimensional model:
• Factor 1: Direct Degradation and Intimidation (encompassing verbal insults, threats of violence, property destruction, and aborted strikes; e.g., items 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14).
• Factor 2: Coercive Control and Monitoring (encompassing jealousy induction, surveillance, restriction of friendships, and threats of relationship termination; e.g., items 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12).
• Model Fit Indices: For the single-factor structural representation incorporating error covariances between syntactically similar items (e.g., physical intimidation items 4 and 8), confirmatory studies report acceptable-to-good model fit indices: Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > .92, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > .90, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .055 (90% CI [.045, .065]), and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .048. Because the correlation between the two latent subfactors typically exceeds r = .80, psychometricians universally endorse the use of the aggregated 14-item composite total score for research and clinical benchmarking.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Safe Dates—Psychological Abuse Perpetration Scale is structured as follows:

• Instrument Type: Standardized self-report behavioral questionnaire.
• Target Population: Adolescents and young adults (approximately 12 to 20 years of age) who have been involved in dating or romantic relationships.
• Item Count: 14 behavioral items.
• Response Format: 4-point frequency response scale:
  • 0 = Never
  • 1 = Seldom
  • 2 = Sometimes
  • 3 = Very Often
• Scoring and Categorization Procedures:
  • Continuous Total Score: Derived by summing the numerical values assigned to all 14 items. Theoretical score range: 0 to 42. Higher scores correspond to greater frequency and severity of psychological abuse perpetration.
  • Categorical Recoding: To facilitate epidemiological classification and risk stratification, summed raw scores are conventionally recoded into four clinical severity categories:
    • Score of 0: Recoded as 0 → Indicates No Perpetration.
    • Score of 1–5: Recoded as 1 → Indicates Mild Psychological Abuse.
    • Score of 6–9: Recoded as 2 → Indicates Moderate Psychological Abuse.
    • Score of 10 or greater: Recoded as 3 → Indicates Severe Psychological Abuse.
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Safe Dates—Psychological Abuse Perpetration Scale was originally formulated in the mid-1990s as part of the federally supported Safe Dates Project, with foundational baseline validation data published in 1996 and comprehensive outcome evaluation data published in 1998 by Dr. Vangie A. Foshee and colleagues.

The instrument was compiled and published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their public domain reference compendium, Measuring Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Perpetration: A Compendium of Assessment Tools (Dahlberg, Toal, Swahn, & Behrens, 2005, p. 135). As a work supported by federal research grants and curated within CDC public resources, the measurement scale itself is accessible for non-commercial educational, academic research, and public health evaluation purposes without royalty fees. However, formal commercial implementations of the complete Safe Dates Program curriculum (including published teaching manuals, parent guides, and multimedia kits) are copyrighted and commercially distributed by Hazelden Publishing. Researchers utilizing the 14-item survey instrument are expected to maintain instrument integrity and provide formal academic citation to Dr. Foshee and the original Safe Dates publications.

12. References

Dahlberg, L. L., Toal, S. B., Swahn, M., & Behrens, C. B. (2005). Measuring intimate partner violence victimization and perpetration: A compendium of assessment tools. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. https://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/IPV_Compendium.pdf

Foshee, V. A., Bauman, K. E., Arriaga, X. B., Helms, R. W., Koch, G. G., & Linder, G. F. (1998). An evaluation of Safe Dates, an adolescent dating violence prevention program. American Journal of Public Health, 88(1), 45–50. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.88.1.45

Foshee, V. A., Benefield, T. S., Ennett, S. T., Bauman, K. E., & Suchindran, C. (2004). Longitudinal predictors of serious physical and sexual dating violence victimization during adolescence. Preventive Medicine, 39(2), 269–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2004.04.014

Foshee, V. A., Linder, G. F., Bauman, K. E., Langwick, S. A., Arriaga, X. B., Heath, J. L., McMahon, P. M., & Bangdiwala, S. (1996). The Safe Dates project: Theoretical basis, evaluation design, and selected baseline findings. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 12(5 Suppl), 39–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(18)30233-X

Straus, M. A., Hamby, S. L., Boney-McCoy, S., & Sugarman, D. B. (1996). The revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2): Development and preliminary psychometric data. Journal of Family Issues, 17(3), 283–316. https://doi.org/10.1177/019251396017003001

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)