Cyber dating abuse: A review of prevalence, evaluation instruments and risk factors

Abstract

With the advancement of technology, a new form of aggression between couples has emerged: digital abuse in loving relationships. Although it is a recent phenomenon, it has attracted the interest from studies because of its negative implications. In this sense, the purpose of this review was to make a survey of empirical research related to digital abuse in love relationships, knowing their prevalence, evaluation instruments, and associated risk factors. We found and analyzed 39 articles referring to the last ten years (2008-2018). The results pointed to a wide variation in the prevalence of this phenomenon beside different ways of operating it. In terms of evaluation measures, there is greater use of self-report instruments; nevertheless, most of them did not report psychometric parameters. Studies have observed that this phenomenon emerges as a psychosocial situation, which may be a result of risk factors of several orders, such as socio-demographic, relationship related, familiar, psychological, and related to perceptions, norms, and beliefs. In addition, several suggestions for future research were made throughout this article.