Victimization in Dating Relationships

1. Abstract

The Victimization in Dating Relationships Scale—frequently referenced in psychological literature as the Safe Dates Dating Violence Victimization Scale—is an 18-item self-report behavioral questionnaire engineered to assess an adolescent’s exposure to physical and sexual intimate partner violence within dating contexts. Developed by Dr. Vangie A. Foshee and colleagues (1996) as an evaluation cornerstone of the landmark Safe Dates Project, the instrument operationalizes violence through discrete, behaviorally specific occurrences rather than subjective or stigmatized labels such as “abuse” or “battering.” The scale is targeted primarily at adolescents and youth in middle school and high school (grades 8 through 12, aged roughly 12 to 18 years). Respondents report how frequently an intimate partner perpetrated specific acts of aggression against them over a defined reference interval (e.g., past year, past 6 months, or lifetime) utilizing a 4-point response metric: Never (0), 1 to 3 times (1), 4 to 9 times (2), and 10 or more times (3). An essential instructional filter ensures respondents record non-reciprocal primary aggression by directing them to exclude actions taken by the partner in self-defense. Psychometric inquiries have demonstrated robust internal consistency reliability across diverse adolescent cohorts, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently ranging between .82 and .93 for global victimization scores. Factor analytic and structural investigations substantiate both unidimensional aggregate scores and multi-dimensional profiles bifurcating moderate physical aggression, severe physical assault, and sexual coercion. The scale exhibits robust convergent, construct, and predictive validity, demonstrating significant longitudinal correlations with post-traumatic stress symptomatology, depressive affect, academic impairment, subsequent revictimization, and partner aggression perpetration. As a core tool cataloged in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Compendium of Assessment Tools, the measure remains a standard benchmark in developmental psychology, prevention science, and clinical adolescent assessment.

2. Keywords

Adolescent dating violence, dating violence victimization, Safe Dates Project, intimate partner violence, teen dating abuse, physical victimization, sexual victimization, psychometric validation, behavioral assessment, youth violence prevention.

3. Authors

The Victimization in Dating Relationships Scale was originated by a team of public health and behavioral science researchers led by:

• Vangie A. Foshee, Ph.D. — Professor, Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
• G. Fletcher Linder, M.S. — Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
• Karl E. Bauman, Ph.D. — Late Professor Emeritus, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
• Collaborating investigators from the Safe Dates Project, including Christopher Ennett, Susan T. Ennett, and G. G. Koch, who contributed to the longitudinal evaluation designs and psychometric profiling of adolescent violence assessments.

Institutional Inquiries: Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 135 Dauer Drive, Rosenau Hall, CB #7440, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7440, USA.

4. Purpose

During adolescence, emerging romantic and dating relationships represent a critical developmental milestone for establishing autonomy, sexual identity, interpersonal intimacy, and conflict resolution capacities. However, these relationships are also uniquely vulnerable to patterns of interpersonal hostility, coercion, and physical victimization. Epidemiological research indicates that teen dating violence (TDV) is an alarming public health crisis with immediate physical danger and profound psychological repercussions, including elevated risks of major depressive disorder, suicidality, substance dependence, eating pathologies, academic dropout, and long-term re-victimization throughout adulthood. The fundamental purpose of the Victimization in Dating Relationships Scale is to provide an empirically rigorous, standardized, behaviorally defined measurement instrument that quantifies the incidence, frequency, and severity of physical and sexual abuse sustained by an adolescent within dating relationships.

Historically, researchers encountered severe measurement bias when relying on subjective single-item screeners or broad questions such as “Have you ever been abused by your boyfriend/girlfriend?” Adolescents frequently underreport abuse due to relationship normalization, romantic idealization, misunderstanding of what constitutes legal or clinical assault, or fear of social stigmatization. Drawing upon the methodologies pioneered in domestic violence research (such as Murray Straus’s Conflict Tactics Scale), Foshee and colleagues circumvented subjective cognitive distortions by breaking down relationship violence into concrete behavioral manifestations—ranging from moderate forms of physical aggression (e.g., scratching, pushing, slapping) to severe life-threatening violence (e.g., choking, burning, beatings, weapon assaults) and sexual violations (forced sexual intercourse and unwanted sexual contact).

Beyond baseline descriptive epidemiology, the scale serves critical functions across several operational spheres:

• Primary Prevention and Program Evaluation: The scale was engineered expressly to serve as a primary outcome measure for the Safe Dates Project, a universally recognized evidence-based school and community prevention initiative. It permits researchers to track changes in victimization rates between randomized intervention and control groups across multi-year follow-up periods.
• Clinical and School-Based Screening: In pediatric psychology, high school guidance environments, and adolescent psychiatric settings, the scale offers a structured behavioral framework to identify youth silently suffering from dating violence, facilitating targeted trauma-informed crisis interventions, safety planning, and therapeutic support.
• Etiological and Developmental Modeling: The scale allows researchers to examine complex developmental trajectories, assessing how early childhood trauma, family-of-origin domestic violence, peer norms, and cognitive schemas predict dating victimization vulnerability across middle to late adolescence.

Importantly, the scale incorporates a vital instructional safeguard addressing partner motivation and reciprocity: respondents are instructed to count behaviors only if the partner initiated them, explicitly filtering out acts executed strictly in self-defense. This refinement mitigates reciprocal conflict confounding and isolates authentic victimization patterns.

5. Psychological Construct

The underlying construct measured by this instrument is adolescent dating violence victimization, specifically operationalized across the domains of physical violence and sexual violence occurring within the matrix of adolescent romantic attachments. Dating violence victimization is conceptualized as an interpersonal trauma characterized by the receipt of intentional, non-accidental physical force or coercive sexual pressure imposed by an intimate partner without the recipient’s consent.

Sub-Dimensions and Behavioral Continuum

Rather than treating violence as a monolithic binary state, the construct represents a behavioral continuum categorized into distinct, clinically meaningful sub-dimensions:

• Moderate / Minor Physical Aggression: This facet captures aggressive behaviors that carry low-to-moderate potential for severe physical trauma but establish an interpersonal dynamic of dominance, physical intimidation, and boundary violation. Behaviors include scratching, slapping with an open hand, pushing, grabbing, shoving, physically twisting an arm, or throwing an object that hits the victim. Within adolescent dating scripts, moderate physical aggression is frequently minimized as playful roughhousing, emotional outbursts, or expressions of jealousy, obscuring its predictive association with escalatory violence trajectories.
• Severe Physical Assault: This dimension comprises severe, high-force assaults capable of inflicting major traumatic injuries, internal hemorrhages, bone fractures, or death. Behaviors operationalized in the scale include punching with a fist, kicking, biting, bending fingers, burning, slamming or holding the victim against a wall, beating up, ejecting the victim from a moving vehicle, attempts at strangulation (choking), and assault with lethal weapons (knives or firearms). Psychologically, severe victimization invokes profound terror, physiological hyperarousal, learned helplessness, and complex post-traumatic stress responses.
• Sexual Victimization and Coercion: This dimension encompasses acts that compromise an adolescent’s sexual bodily autonomy through physical force, threats, or psychological pressure. The scale specifically isolates forced sexual intercourse (rape) and forced performance of unwanted non-penetrative sexual acts (sexual battery/coercion). In adolescent developmental contexts, sexual victimization by a romantic partner carries profound psychological disruption, frequently triggering severe shame, dissociation, self-blame, distorted sexual scripts, and depressive symptomatology.

Directionality and Non-Reciprocity

A critical theoretical nuance of the construct as measured by Foshee et al. is its focus on non-reciprocal initiation. Adolescent relationships frequently exhibit mutual physical skirmishes during conflict. To isolate genuine victimization from situations where an individual may have initiated an attack and received proportionate physical resistance, the construct specifies that an act must be partner-initiated. By emphasizing that retaliatory or defensive counter-actions by the partner must be omitted, the instrument captures authentic non-defensive relational aggression.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual formulation of the Victimization in Dating Relationships Scale is rooted in several interconnected psychological and sociological frameworks, synthesizing behaviorism, social ecology, and feminist analyses of coercive control.

1. Social Learning Theory and Intergenerational Transmission of Violence

Drawing on Albert Bandura‘s Social Learning Theory, the conceptual framework posits that aggressive behaviors in intimate contexts are acquired through observational modeling, vicarious reinforcement, and cognitive reinforcement within the home and peer environments. Adolescents who observe parental intimate partner violence or experience harsh physical discipline internalize cognitive schemas that frame physical force as an acceptable, normative mechanism for resolving interpersonal conflicts or asserting interpersonal power. When translated into dating experiences, these internalized scripts prime adolescents to either enact aggression or tolerate victimization, viewing coercive partner behaviors as expressions of intense passion or normative relationship friction.

2. The Conflict Tactics Paradigm

The scale directly inherits the structural philosophy of Murray A. Straus’s Conflict Tactics paradigm (CTS). Straus conceptualized violence as behavioral tactics used to manage inevitable interpersonal disagreements within intimate systems. While classical CTS formulations received critique for decontextualizing violence (treating all pushes or slaps as equivalent regardless of intent, physical size disparities, or defensive context), Foshee refined the behavioral strategy by establishing directional attribution (omitting self-defense) and calibrating the behavioral severity matrix to reflect the unique dynamics of adolescent dating subcultures.

3. The Social-Ecological Model

In accordance with the Social-Ecological Model advanced by Urie Bronfenbrenner and adapted by violence epidemiologists (Dahlberg & Krug), adolescent dating victimization is not an isolated individual psychopathology. Instead, it results from reciprocal interactions across nested ecological layers:

• Ontogenetic/Individual Level: Biological sex, history of child maltreatment, beliefs about gender roles, conflict management skills, and emotional regulation capacities.
• Microsystem Level: The dynamic qualities of the dating dyad, peer network tolerance for relationship aggression, and communication dynamics.
• Exosystem Level: School climates, neighborhood safety, and community norms regarding dating behaviors.
• Macrosystem Level: Broad patriarchal and cultural ideologies that sanction male entitlement, romanticize possessive control, and excuse sexual coercion.

4. Coercive Control Theory

In alignment with Evan Stark’s theory of coercive control, the physical and sexual acts captured by the scale are not understood merely as isolated physical events, but as instrumental mechanisms within an ongoing pattern of interpersonal dominance. Acts such as restricting mobility (slamming against a wall, dumping someone from a car) or sexual coercion serve to strip the developing adolescent of bodily sovereignty, eroding personal agency and reinforcing relational subjugation.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Victimization in Dating Relationships Scale has been thoroughly evaluated through cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental intervention designs across socio-demographically diverse adolescent cohorts.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity is substantiated by the scale’s sensitivity in capturing established gender patterns and developmental trajectories. In large adolescent trials conducted by Foshee and colleagues (e.g., the 14-county Safe Dates adolescent cohort encompassing over 1,800 youth), baseline scores accurately reflected the high prevalence of moderate aggression among younger teens, while capturing low-frequency, high-severity violence among older adolescents. Confirmatory structural evaluations demonstrate that the items load significantly onto their intended underlying theoretical dimensions, with factor loadings regularly exceeding .50 across diverse samples.

Convergent Validity

The instrument demonstrates strong convergent validity with established measures of relationship dysfunction, intimate aggression, and trauma symptomatology. Victimization scores correlate substantially and positively with:

• The Conflict in Adolescent Dating Relationships Inventory (CADRI; Wolfe et al., 2001) physical and sexual victimization subscales (r ranging from .65 to .78).
• The physical assault subscales of the revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS-2; Straus et al., 1996) (r = .68 to .82).
• Standardized indices of adolescent psychological distress, including the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), showing positive correlations (r = .30 to .45), demonstrating that higher victimization scores correspond with elevated depressive affect.
• Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and trauma-related dissociation (r = .35 to .52).

Discriminant Validity

The scale effectively discriminates between intimate partner victimization and general non-dating peer aggression (such as generic schoolyard bullying or community violence exposure). While adolescents exposed to dating violence frequently have higher baseline exposure to community crime, factor analytic correlations with generalized peer conflict measures remain moderate (r < .30), confirming that the instrument taps relationship-specific relational dynamics rather than a generalized tendency to report life stress or peer altercations.

Predictive and Evaluative Validity

The predictive validity of the scale is exceptionally well-documented. Longitudinal trials of the Safe Dates curriculum revealed that baseline scores on this scale predicted romantic relationship stability, academic underachievement, and subsequent revictimization at 1-year, 2-year, 3-year, and 4-year follow-up assessments. Furthermore, the scale demonstrated high evaluative validity (treatment sensitivity), successfully detecting statistically significant decreases in physical and sexual victimization among students randomized to the Safe Dates intervention compared to no-intervention control groups (reductions ranging from 56% to 92% across moderate and severe violence classifications; Foshee et al., 1998, 2004).

8. Reliability

The scale exhibits robust empirical reliability across multiple demographic stratifications, racial groups, and school grade tiers.

Internal Consistency Reliability

Internal consistency metrics for the overall 18-item composite scale consistently surpass standard psychometric thresholds (Cronbach’s alpha > .80):

• In the baseline evaluation study of the Safe Dates Project involving 8th and 9th graders (Foshee et al., 1996), the overall victimization scale yielded a Cronbach’s alpha of .88 for physical violence items and .82 for the combined physical and sexual violence scale.
• Subsequent longitudinal follow-ups across broader grade ranges (grades 8 through 12) have reported composite internal reliability estimates ranging from .86 to .92.
• Subscale-specific alphas: The Moderate Physical Violence subscale typically exhibits alphas between .78 and .84; the Severe Physical Violence subscale exhibits alphas between .75 and .86; and the Sexual Victimization subscale yields alphas between .72 and .82, which are notably robust given the lower base-rate prevalence of severe weapon-related acts and complete rape in general adolescent school samples.

Test-Retest Reliability and Temporal Stability

Assessing test-retest reliability in violent victimization assessment presents unique methodological challenges because true exposure may change over time, and recall intervals must be held constant. In short-term stability trials (2 to 4-week retest intervals using lifetime or fixed 6-month retrospective windows), test-retest correlations have ranged from .74 to .85, reflecting stable recall of discrete behavioral assault events. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) evaluated in longitudinal measurement invariance models affirm that adolescent responses demonstrate strong metric and scalar stability across developmental progression.

9. Factor Analysis

Structural evaluations of the Victimization in Dating Relationships Scale utilizing both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have yielded critical insights regarding the dimensional hierarchy of adolescent dating violence.

Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA)

Initial principal axis factoring and principal component analyses with oblique rotation (promax/oblimin) conducted during the instrument’s validation revealed a robust primary factor accounting for substantial common variance (frequently between 38% and 48%), confirming the psychometric defensibility of computing a single global dating victimization index. However, secondary scree plot inspections and eigenvalues-greater-than-one criteria regularly identify a multi-factor solution reflecting behavioral severity gradients:

• Factor 1: Minor to Moderate Physical Violence: High factor loadings (.60 to .82) on items such as scratching (Item 1), slapping (Item 2), pushing/shoving (Item 9), and throwing objects (Item 11).
• Factor 2: Severe / Lethal Physical Assault: Strong loadings (.55 to .79) on items reflecting severe injury potential, including choking (Item 8), beating up (Item 17), assault with a knife or gun (Item 18), hitting with a fist (Item 15), and burning (Item 14).
• Factor 3: Sexual Coercion and Penetrative Assault: Salient loadings (.70 to .88) on forced sexual intercourse (Item 12) and forced non-consensual sexual acts (Item 13).

Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) and Model Fit

Subsequent psychometric investigations utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM) in diverse adolescent populations have compared competing measurement models:

• Unidimensional Model: All 18 items loading on a single latent “Victimization” construct. This model yields acceptable fit in general community samples (CFI ≈ .91, TLI ≈ .90, RMSEA ≈ .065), justifying the standard practice of calculating total additive composite scores.
• Three-Factor Correlated Model (Moderate Physical, Severe Physical, Sexual): This model demonstrates superior goodness-of-fit indices (CFI = .96 to .98; TLI = .95 to .97; RMSEA = .038 to .045; SRMR = .032 to .041), confirming that while these abusive behaviors intercorrelate, they represent statistically distinct severity clusters.
• Bifactor Model: In large-scale epidemiological investigations, a bifactor structure—featuring one general dating victimization factor alongside specific group factors for moderate physical, severe physical, and sexual assault—accounts exceptionally well for item variance, demonstrating that individual items derive meaningful variance from both a unified violence continuum and specific behavioral topologies.

Measurement invariance analyses across biological sex confirm configural, metric, and scalar invariance across boys and girls, indicating that the scale measures the underlying construct with equivalent operational accuracy across genders.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Victimization in Dating Relationships Scale is a standardized behavioral questionnaire designed for quick and accurate assessment of adolescent dating violence.

• Instrument Name: Victimization in Dating Relationships Scale (also known as the Safe Dates Dating Violence Victimization Scale).
• Target Population: Adolescents and youth in grades 8–12 (ages ~12 to 18 years); also adapted for emerging adults in collegiate settings.
• Administration Type: Self-report questionnaire (available in paper-and-pencil or computerized/digital assessment formats).
• Item Count: 18 discrete, behaviorally defined items.
• Administration Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
• Response Scale: 4-point ordinal frequency metric:
  • 0 = Never
  • 1 = 1 to 3 times
  • 2 = 4 to 9 times
  • 3 = 10 or more times
• Scoring Methodologies:
  • Total Continuous Sum Score: Sum the point values across all 18 items. Theoretical range: 0 to 54. Higher total scores denote higher frequency, diversity, and severity of dating violence victimization.
  • Mean Item Score: Sum all point values and divide by the total number of items answered (range: 0.0 to 3.0). Useful when accommodating occasional missing data.
  • Categorical Prevalence (Dichotomous / Binary): For epidemiological tracking, items can be dichotomized (0 = Never; 1 = Ever [if response ≥ 1]). Respondents are categorized as “Victimized” if they endorse one or more acts.
  • Subscale Scores: Researchers frequently construct subscale scores for Moderate Physical Victimization (e.g., items 1, 2, 3, 9, 11), Severe Physical Victimization (e.g., items 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18), and Sexual Victimization (items 12, 13).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale was developed in 1996 as an empirical outcome tool for the Safe Dates Project, funded by research grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It was formally indexed in the CDC compendium Measuring Violence-Related Attitudes, Behaviors, and Influences Among Youths: A Compendium of Assessment Tools (Dahlberg et al., 2005, pp. 200–201).

• Fee: Free of charge. The instrument is considered in the public domain for research, academic, and non-commercial public health evaluation purposes.
• Permissions: Formal written permission is generally not required for non-commercial educational, clinical, or academic research applications. Researchers and practitioners using the tool are expected to maintain scientific integrity and cite the seminal publication (Foshee et al., 1996) and the CDC Compendium reference.
• Commercial Inquiries: Any proposed commercial redistribution or proprietary incorporation into monetized commercial digital software should be cleared with the principal author (Dr. Vangie A. Foshee) or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Office of Technology Commercialization.

12. References

• Dahlberg, L. L., Toal, S. B., Swahn, M., & Behrens, C. B. (2005). Measuring violence-related attitudes, behaviors, and influences among youths: A compendium of assessment tools (2nd ed., pp. 200–201). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/YV_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., Bauman, K. E., Ennett, S. T., Linder, G. F., Benefield, T., & Suchindran, C. (2004). Assessing the long-term effects of the Safe Dates program and a booster in preventing and reducing adolescent dating violence victimization and perpetration. American Journal of Public Health, 94(4), 619–624. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.94.4.619
• Foshee, V. A., Linder, 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. (1979). Measuring intrafamily conflict and violence: The Conflict Tactics (CT) Scales. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 41(1), 75–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/351733
• 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
• Wolfe, D. A., Scott, K., Reitzel-Jaffe, D., Wekerle, C., Grasley, E., & Pittman, A. L. (2001). Development and validation of the Conflict in Adolescent Dating Relationships Inventory (CADRI). Psychological Assessment, 13(2), 277–293. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.13.2.277

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)