Session: Understanding Help-Seeking Behaviors of Dating Violence Survivors: What Are the Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Health Outcomes? (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

Survivors of dating violence (DV) suffer numerous negative consequences, including health and behavioral problems, and are likely to experience further violence later. Research on intimate partner violence survivors' help-seeking shows that active help-seeking has positive effects on their health, and reduces the likelihood of revictimization. However, many survivors, who could benefit from the range of help, such as formal (e.g., police and health care) and informal help (e.g., friends and family), do not seek help. For social work services to better serve DV survivors, it is critical to understand who are affected by DV, what they do after victimization, and what the outcomes of help-seeking are. However, there are a limited number of studies on DV and help-seeking among college students, not to mention the effects of the survivors' help-seeking on their health. We fill these gaps by using a recent college student survey to examine: (1) the factors for DV and help-seeking; (2) who used, or did not use, a certain type of help and why; and (3) the health outcomes of help-seeking. We collected data from four universities across the U.S. and Canada (N=4,843) through online survey in 2016. The study sample consisted of only those who had been in romantic relationships and reported DV victimization (N=2,178). Major variables were help-seeking, DV, health outcomes of help-seeking, and individual characteristics. Help-seeking was measured by 14 items, including formal and informal help; DV by 12 items, including physical and psychological violence; health outcomes by one single item question on physical health, and a 20-item scale for depression; individual characteristics included race, gender, age, income, and adverse childhood experiences (ACE) that were measured by 21 items, including peer victimization, and child abuse and neglect. Analytic techniques used were structural equation modeling, chi-square, and logistic regression. Major findings include that students with ACE were more likely to experience higher levels of DV and seek help after DV; more than two-thirds of DV survivors did not seek any help, with the biggest reason being their perception that dating violence was a private or personal matter; males sought less help than females; and those seeking help reported higher levels of depression and poorer physical health than those who did not seek any help. As ACE affects DV and help-seeking, service providers need to improve their services toward trauma-informed services to better assess and serve the survivors. As many survivors, especially males, did not seek help at all, college campuses would benefit from bystander interventions where friends can intervene in DV, as well as targeting male students. Although our data cannot explain why the survivors using any help reported high depression and low physical health, it is possible that negative health consequences of DV last long and may not be improved just by seeking any type of help. Future research needs to take consideration of what happened after ACE to better understand its effects on help-seeking later, and examine multiple measures of health outcomes of help-seeking, including long-term outcomes.