Both teenage boys and girls can be victims and perpetrators in the dating scene, a large-scale federally funded study suggests.
The study called National Survey on Teen Relationships and Intimate Violence was funded by National Institute of Justice and performed by NORC. The results were then provided to the Associated Press.
More than 660 teens across the country from 12 to 18 years old participated in the survey, where they were asked about their relationship activities by completing an online questionnaire.
Around 20 percent of the respondents confessed they had been a victim of sexual and physical abuse during their relationships, though the activities can range from stalking to taunting or name-calling. One of the lead researchers Elizabeth Mumford said that although these types of scenarios are very common, they still remain to be harmful and abnormal; they should be considered as unhealthy forms of teen interaction.
The prevalence of sexual and physical abuse among teens in a relationship or in the dating scene is not affected by their geographical background or demographics such as race.
Bruce Taylor, another lead researcher for the survey, meanwhile, mentioned that the overall results were considerably higher than in the previous studies about the same topic, which may suggest that these conditions have become more the prevalent and widespread in teen culture.
Nevertheless, both researchers believe that the format of the survey may have also encouraged more teens to be honest. Online questionnaires provided these participants privacy.
On the other end, teen boys and girls are also prone to become perpetrators, with some differences in terms of age. For example, girls tend to be more aggressive than boys by belting serious threats or showing physical violence when they are 12 to 14 years old. However, by the time the teens reach 15 to 18 years old, the situations become reversed.
The study, according to the researchers, should encourage schools and government agencies to create programs that address both, not just one or the other.
