Female Survivors of Dating Violence and their Social Networks

This study embeds dating violence in context. It examines how 130 young adult female survivors of dating violence involved members of their social network in the experience of abuse, how network members responded to them, survivors' satisfaction with these responses and the reasons some network members were not informed. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a questionnaire. Results indicate that the responses of network members serve a supportive and a supervisory function; and these responses are interpreted within a feminist gender analysis framework Implications for prevention and education programs are discussed.