Introduction to a Special Section on the Effects of the Dating Matters Model on Secondary Outcomes: Results from a...

Teen dating violence (TDV) affects millions of young people in the USA each year (Basile et al. 2020) and is associated with a myriad of negative consequences across the lifespan, including placing individuals at greater risk for experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) in their more permanent relationships in adulthood (Exner-Cortens et al. Pediatrics 131(1):71-78 Exner-Cortens et al. 2013; Exner-Cortens et al. Journal of Adolescent Health 60(2):176-183 Exner-Cortens et al. 2017). The CDC developed the Dating Matters®: Strategies to Promote Healthy Teen Relationships comprehensive prevention model to prevent TDV and its consequences among young people, and it was found to be effective at reducing TDV perpetration and victimization compared with another evidence-based program (Niolon et al. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 57(1):13-23 Niolon et al. 2019). Dating Matters addresses multiple risk and protective factors for TDV through its multiple components, many of which are shared risk and protective factors for other forms of violence and risk behaviors among adolescents. This article introduces this special section, which includes three papers examining these secondary outcomes of the Dating Matters comparative effectiveness, multi-site, longitudinal cluster randomized controlled trial and concludes with an invited commentary by Debnam and Temple (2020). This introduction briefly discusses the Dating Matters comprehensive prevention model, the comparative effectiveness trial used to evaluate effectiveness, the outcomes examined by the three papers included in this special section and the commentary from external reviewers. This special section makes an important contribution to the field of violence prevention, highlighting a preventive intervention for TDV that addresses a constellation of risk and protective factors and demonstrating its effects on multiple adolescent risk and violence outcomes.