Safe Dates – Psychological Violence Victimization

Abstract

The Safe Dates—Psychological Violence Victimization instrument is a specialized 14-item scale derived from the comprehensive Safe Dates program, an established evidence-based program designed for the primary prevention of adolescent dating violence. The core philosophy of the Safe Dates curriculum posits that teenagers can acquire essential skills necessary to cultivate and maintain healthy relationships, thereby reducing risk exposure.

This specific measurement component is meticulously crafted to quantify the extent and severity of psychological abuse, emotional manipulation, and coercive control behaviors experienced by a teenager within a dating or romantic context. By aggregating responses across 14 distinct behavioral indicators, the scale provides a robust, quantitative measure of victimization severity, which is indispensable for rigorous clinical assessment and the systematic evaluation of prevention intervention effectiveness.

Keywords

Dating Violence, Psychological Abuse, Victimization, Adolescents, Prevention Program, Emotional Abuse, Teen Dating, Intimate Partner Violence, Relationship Skills.

Authors

Foshee VA, Bauman KE, Arriaga XB, Helms RW, Koch GG, Linder GF.

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Purpose

The primary objective of the Safe Dates—Psychological Violence Victimization scale is to accurately measure the frequency and intensity of non-physical abusive tactics and coercive control experienced by young people in their romantic relationships. This metric is critically important for several applications, including the early identification of individuals experiencing high levels of risk, the comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of the Safe Dates intervention, and the monitoring of population-level trends in adolescent dating violence over time.

The broader Safe Dates program, which utilizes this instrument for evaluation, is structured to empower adolescents. Its aims include enabling them to recognize subtle and overt signs of abuse, fostering the development of constructive conflict resolution and communication skills, and ensuring they understand the complex emotional and potential legal ramifications associated with relationship violence. The full curriculum is typically delivered across 10 interactive sessions, supplemented by crucial parent and community components designed to strengthen and sustain the prevention messages outside of the classroom setting.

Construct

The scale is designed to operationalize and measure the psychological construct of Psychological Violence Victimization specifically within the context of adolescent dating. This construct is conceptually defined as the experience of behaviors intended primarily to inflict emotional distress, establish dominance and control, promote social isolation, or systematically damage the victim’s self-esteem, rather than relying on direct physical force.

The 14 constituent items of the instrument capture a wide spectrum of manipulative, controlling, and emotionally abusive actions. These items collectively reflect the multi-faceted and often subtle nature of psychological abuse prevalent in teenage relationships. The focus remains strictly on the non-physical dimensions of harm experienced by the respondent.

Validity

The validity of the Safe Dates measurement instruments is strongly supported by their integral role in the robust, longitudinal evaluation framework of the Safe Dates program itself. The selection of specific items for the victimization scale was guided by extensive research and demonstrates high content validity. These items accurately reflect behaviors consistently identified by public health experts and psychological researchers as definitive markers of psychological abuse and coercive control within young romantic partnerships.

Furthermore, the scale has been deployed extensively in large-scale epidemiological and intervention studies involving diverse adolescent populations. This widespread empirical utilization provides substantial support for its ecological relevance and its capacity to reliably measure the intended psychological construct within real-world research and prevention settings.

Reliability

While specific, detailed psychometric indices, such as precise Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, are not explicitly provided in the core source material, instruments adopted for use in major, federally funded, evidence-based program evaluations—such as the Safe Dates study—are generally expected to demonstrate acceptable levels of internal consistency and test-retest reliability for research involving adolescents.

The scale’s methodology, which involves an aggregated scoring approach across the 14 items, conceptually supports the notion that the individual items reliably cohere. This cohesion suggests they are measuring a singular, underlying dimension of psychological victimization, making the total summed score a reliable index of overall abuse exposure.

Factor Analysis

The Safe Dates—Psychological Violence Victimization scale is structurally designed to function as a unidimensional measurement tool. Its primary output is a single, overall summed score that represents the total severity of psychological abuse experienced by the respondent.

Although detailed statistical results from confirmatory or exploratory factor analysis are not included in this entry’s specific source context, the established scoring protocol strongly supports the underlying conceptual framework. This framework posits that the 14 distinct controlling and emotionally harmful behaviors consistently load onto one primary latent factor: psychological abuse within the adolescent dating relationship domain.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report inventory (Integrated component of the larger Safe Dates program evaluation battery).

Format: 14 items, utilizing a 4-point frequency response scale.

Language Available: English (Original research development).

Population Group: Adolescents and Teenagers.

Age Group: Typically targets middle school and high school ages (ranging approximately from 14–18 years).

Population Details: Students who are currently involved in, or have recently experienced, dating or romantic relationships. The scale is most often implemented in school-based settings as a core element of the Safe Dates prevention initiative.

Test Methodology: Responses are numerically assigned point values based on frequency: 0 for Never, 1 for Seldom, 2 for Sometimes, and 3 for Very Often. The total psychological abuse victimization score is calculated by summing the point values across all 14 items. This raw summed score is then typically recoded into four predefined severity levels for interpretation and analysis:

• 0 = 0 (Indicating No victimization)
• 1–5 = 1 (Indicating Mild psychological abuse)
• 6–9 = 2 (Indicating Moderate psychological abuse)
• 10 and greater = 3 (Indicating Severe psychological abuse)

Keywords

Emotional Manipulation, Coercive Control, Teen Relationships, Prevention Science, Likert Scale, Abuse Severity, Adolescent Health, Non-Physical Abuse.

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Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not Available in Source.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not Available in Source.

Correspondence Address: Not Available in Source.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Safe Dates program materials, including this specific scale, were developed and subjected to initial evaluation during the mid-1990s. The instrument is well-documented and publicly available for academic research purposes, notably being featured in the comprehensive compendium published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The original PDF compilation, which details the measure, can be downloaded here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/IPV_Compendium.pdf. Researchers intending to use the scale, particularly for commercial or large-scale applications outside of standard academic research, are strongly advised to consult the original authors or the CDC regarding specific usage permissions and licensing requirements.

Test Year: Initial research and evaluation documentation was published in 1996 and 1998, marking the primary validation period for the instrument.

Reference’s

The instrument is thoroughly documented on page 77 of the publication Measuring Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Perpetration: A Compendium of Assessment Tools, which was published by the CDC.

• Foshee VA, Bauman KE, Arriaga XB, Helms RW, Koch GG, Linder GF. An evaluation of Safe Dates, an adolescent dating violence program. American Journal of Public Health 1998;88:45–50.
• Foshee VA, Linder GF, Bauman KE, et al. The Safe Dates project: theoretical basis, evaluation design, and selected baseline findings. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 1996;12:39–47.

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Items of the Safe Dates – Psychological Violence Victimization

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Point values are assigned as follows:

3= Very Often

2= Sometimes

1= Seldom

0= Never

1. Damaged something that belonged to me.
2. Said things to hurt my feelings on purpose
3. Insulted me in front of others.
4. Threw something at me but missed.
5. Would not let me do things with other people.
6. Threatened to start dating someone else. .
7. Told me I could not talk to someone of the opposite sex.
8. Started to hit me but stopped.
9. Did something just to make me jealous.
10. Blamed me for bad things they did.
11. Threatened to hurt me.
12. Made me describe where I was every minute of the day.
13. Brought up something from the past to hurt me.
14. Put down my looks.