Family Functionality and Dating Violence Among High School Students in Southern Peru

Adolescence is a crucial transition stage for young people. While many physical, psychological, and social developmental changes are taking place, this may also be the time of a teenager’s first love relationship. At this stage of early romance, adolescents sometimes experience violent abusive relationships, and the choices around this reality could be linked to family upbringing and history. The objective of the study was to determine the relationship between such violent encounters in early teenage love relationships and family functionality using the Intrafamily Relationships Evaluation Test (FF-SIL). This study explored the experiences of secondary students at a school in southern Peru in 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic. A quantitative method was used, entailing a descriptive, cross-sectional, correlational approach. The questionnaire was administered to 153 student respondents. The results show that 45.1% of students come from moderately functional families, followed by 29.4% from dysfunctional families. Likewise, 24% of adolescents report having experienced violence in their relationships, which is relatively equally distributed across all levels of family functionality. Although no significant relationship was found between family functionality and violence (p > 0.05), the present study highlights the existence of bidirectionality in violence between adolescent partners, with a slightly higher incidence in violence perpetrated by women. In terms of violence, the violence received (22%) exceeds the violence exerted (13%) during dating. In both categories, victims of physical violence prevail, and no significant gender differences are found. These results provide a piece of baseline information for preventing adolescent dating violence in education institutions, also a reference for health and other social policymakers.