The study “Understanding Perceived Motives for Dating Violence Among Adolescents: A Mixed-Methods Approach,” with the participation of our principal investigator at CISeAL, Dr. Venus Medina, analyzes the perceived motives that Ecuadorian adolescents attribute to dating violence, understood as a priority public health issue that affects physical, psychological, and emotional well-being during a key stage of development. Using a concurrent mixed-methods design with equal quantitative and qualitative weight, applied to 703 adolescents in the quantitative phase and 103 in the qualitative phase, the study does not seek to identify objective causes of violence, but rather to understand how young people themselves interpret and justify situations that could trigger aggressive behaviors in their relationships. In line with the ecological model of the World Health Organization and coercive control theory, the findings show that perceived motives are shaped through the interaction of individual, relational, and contextual factors.

In the quantitative phase, jealousy emerged as the most frequent motive in both sexes, with greater intensity among males, followed by reasons associated with the expression of anger and communication difficulties; moreover, descriptive differences by sex were observed, with males tending to justify violence as a reaction or control mechanism, while females framed it more as an emotional response to situations perceived as threatening, although only the motive linked to sexual arousal showed a statistically significant association. The qualitative phase expanded these findings by revealing dimensions not captured by the scale, such as family interference, the reproduction of control patterns learned at home, peer pressure, and circumstantial factors such as academic, work, or economic problems that increase stress and reduce emotional regulation capacity. The integration of both phases made it possible to generate meta-inferences underscoring that adolescent dating violence does not respond to a single trigger, but rather to a multicausal framework in which gender norms, deficits in socioemotional skills, and sociocultural tensions specific to the Ecuadorian context converge. Overall, the study provides relevant evidence for the design of culturally adapted preventive interventions aimed not only at reducing the normalization of jealousy and control in youth relationships, but also at strengthening communication skills, emotional regulation, and critical analysis of gender norms from an early age.

Would you like to learn more in depth about the methodology, statistical results, and implications for the design of preventive programs in Ecuador?

We invite you to read the full article at: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/1/31