Teenage Boys Who Experience Violence More Likely to Use Violence on Partner

Data collection study led by SBU researcher published in PLOS One

A study that measured real-time violence exposure on adolescent boys (ages 15 to 19) using cell phone survey data reveals that boys who experienced recent violence were more likely to use violence directed at their partners. The research, led by Stony Brook’s Rachel Kidman, uses data from weekly mobile phone surveys from nearly 500 adolescent boys living in Soweto, South Africa, during 2020 to 2022. Their findings are detailed in a paper published in PLOS One.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has dire mental and physical health consequences. For health professionals to intervene, understanding why young men or adolescent boys perpetrate IPV is critical. While there is already evidence that men who experience abuse in childhood are more likely to perpetrate violence, this study centers on how new, daily experiences of violence in adolescence (collected via real-time mobile surveys) affect IPV perpetration.

The researchers obtained parental consent for the boys to complete the surveys, and all information remained private. Counselors, social workers and other professionals were part of the process and available for consultation as necessary. All respondents live in a region in South Africa where violence and IPV involving adolescent boys is high and carries the extra risk of HIV transmission.

The weekly cell phone surveys asked boys about their experience of violence over the past 24 hours, including verbal, physical and sexual violence. A total 12,603 surveys were completed and used to assess how boys’ violence victimization was related to IPV perpetration.

They found that about one in ten boys were the victim of violence on an average day.

“We also saw that the boys’ experience of violence changed on a day-to-day basis. Some days they experienced violence from a family member, peer, or partner; and on other days they did not,” said Kidman, lead author and associate professor in the Program of Public Health and the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine in the Renaissance School of Medicine.

“Critically, on days that they experienced violence themselves, boys were much more likely to perpetrate violence against intimate partners. This dynamic is not captured in the larger literature on childhood exposures and later IPV perpetration, which emphasizes long-term processes. By re-focusing attention on what is happening now in boys’ daily lives, this study highlights a different set of complementary intervention points,” explained Kidman.

The team says that their findings help to expand this field of research in three ways. First, the findings show that what happens in adolescence matters; for boys ages 15 to 19, there are strong associations between the amount of violence victimization they experience in the past year and their likelihood of IPV perpetration. Second, by using mobile surveys to collect data on violence victimization and perpetration in the past 24-hours, measures are largely free from recall bias. Thus, the resulting analyses present a more accurate picture of their association. Third and most importantly, the survey data demonstrates that exposure to violence is dynamic and shapes IPV behavior on a day-to-day basis.

“These results mean we have an opportunity to intervene and interrupt the cycle of violence during adolescence,” said Kidman, stressing that it may be worth teaching adolescent boys skills around emotion regulation and reactivity to adverse experiences, as this may reduce the likelihood of their IPV perpetration against female partners.

The authors say further study should aim to isolate exactly how exposure to violence leads to same-day IPV perpetration, such as determining if anger, depression, alcohol use, or other factors add to IPV, and if there is a delayed timing between victimization and perpetration.

Research reported in the paper was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health under the Award R01MH119878.