Use of Formal and Informal Help Regarding Dating Violence Among Undergraduate College Students

Background and Purpose: About 10% to 50% of college students experience dating violence. Other than the prevalence rates of dating violence among college students, little is known regarding college students’ help-seeking behaviors. The goal of this study is to examine dating violence-related help-seeking behaviors among undergraduate students and explore differences of these behaviors based on demographic factors.

Methods: The current study collected data from four universities across the U.S. and Canada (N=4843) through online survey from March 2016 to December 2016. Undergraduate students over the age of 18 were eligible to participate. This study focused on 2178 participants reporting IPV experience. We used descriptive statistics to understand help seeking behaviors. We ran a logistic regression to understand differences of these behaviors based on demographic factors such as race, gender, age, and income. 

Results: Overall, only 30.2% of participants who experienced dating violence had sought some form of help. The most utilized source of formal help was social workers (15.3%), followed by medical services (12.9%), and the police (11.0%). In terms of seeking help from informal sources, the most utilized informal source of help was friends (93.1%), followed by immediate family (59.4%) and coworkers (17.5%). Among formal sources of help, participants found social workers to be the most helpful (61%), followed by medical services (48.6%) and women or men’s programs (34.7%). For informal sources of help, participants found friends to be the most helpful (82.2%), followed by immediate family (75.8%) and extended family (58%), while only 36% and 25.9% found religious officials and partner’s family helpful, respectively. The reasons for not seeking help were: ‘a private or personal matter’ (27.1%), inconvenience (7.3%), ‘they did not want their partner to get into trouble’ (6.9%), ‘services would be inefficient’ (6.2%), and ‘afraid of reprisal by their partner’ (4.2%). The logistic regression model was statistically significant (chi square = 41.035, p<0.01 with df=4). The model explained 37.0% (Nagelkerke R²) of the variance in help-seeking behaviors and correctly classified 71.7% of cases. Males were 0.43 times less likely to seek help than females. Other demographic variables were not significant.

Conclusion: Even with greater attention paid to dating violence on college campuses, only less than one-third of participants in our study sought any help. In addition, male students were found to seek help much less than female students do. The biggest reason for not seeking help was students’ perception that dating violence is a private or personal matter. It is striking to find this result considering the great strides made regarding changing societal norms around dating violence. These results highlight the need for college campus programs for dating violence to target attitudes towards help-seeking, especially among male students. Finally, friends were most sought out informal help, which suggests that college campus efforts to respond to dating violence would benefit from bystander interventions where friends can intervene in cases of dating violence.