Dating Matters: Strategies to Promote Healthy Teen Relationships

Summary

The Dating Matters: Strategies to Promote Healthy Teen Relationships Initiative intends to promote respectful, nonviolent dating relationships among adolescents living in high-risk, urban communities. CDC has developed a comprehensive approach to promoting respectful, non-violent relationships based on current evidence based and evidence informed strategies. This comprehensive approach includes: school-based curricula for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students; separate parent programs for parents of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students; a communications campaign involving social media and near-peer brand ambassadors; an online training about dating violence for educators; policy assessment at the school or community level; and development and validation of school and community level indicators of teen dating violence. Additionally, schools assigned to the comprehensive condition will also receive intensive training and technical assistance to support implementation of these components. Among 4 U.S. sites, 44 schools will be randomly assigned to implement either the Dating Matters comprehensive approach or the "standard of care" approach, which we are operationalizing as Safe Dates, a an evidence based student curriculum for 8th graders. We hypothesize that the comprehensive approach will be more effective than the standard approach at preventing the perpetration and victimization of teen dating violence over time and at promoting positive relationship behaviors over time.

Conditions

• Teen Dating Violence
• Healthy Dating Relationship Behaviors

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Dating Matters Comprehensive Approach

The Dating Matters Comprehensive Approach includes: 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Student Curricula; Parent Programs for parents of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders; A communications campaign involving brand ambassadors, a text message campaign, and social media campaign; An online training about teen dating violence for educators; Developmental component: A guidance document for sites on assessing and informing local policies relevant to teen dating violence for comprehensive schools (likely to be substantial cross and within site variation on this component)

BEHAVIORAL

Standard of Care Safe Dates Approach

Safe Dates curriculum for 8th grade students

Sponsors & Collaborators

• NORC at the University of Chicago

  collaborator OTHER

• Ogilvy Public Relations

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Alameda County Public Health Department

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Baltimore City Health Department

  collaborator OTHER

• Broward County Health Department

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Chicago Department of Public Health

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  lead FED

Principal Investigators

• Phyllis H Niolon, Ph.D. · Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2012-08-31

Primary Completion

2018-08-01

Completion

2018-08-01

Countries

• United States

Study Locations