The power of family and community factors in predicting dating violence: A meta-analysis

Dating violence (DV) has been well-documented as one of the serious public health problems leading various negative health consequences, such as physical injury, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and so on. Many factors predicting DV have been already identified; however, few papers presented the predicting power of those factors. Therefore, this study aims to identify the power of family- and community-related factors in predicting the perpetration and victimization of DV and to determine the strongest risk factors using a meta-analysis. Through a rigorous search procedure, a total of 131 correlates of DV perpetrators and 139 correlates of DV victims were identified in 27 studies. The results showed that “having deviant peers” was the strongest risk factor of DV perpetration, whereas “witnessing parental violence” was the strongest risk factor of DV victimization. Also, we found that the risk factors were more powerful predictors of DV perpetrators and victims than were the protective factors. Findings from this study provided valuable evidence to identify DV victimization and perpetration, and to develop intervention strategies preventing DV.