Abstract

The present is a study whose objective was to measure and describe the types of present violence in dating relationships formed by adolescents of the city of Arica (Chile). We took a representative sample of 360 adolescents between 14 and 18 years, who were interviewed with a questionnaire on violence in relationships, whose overall reliability was 0.85 with a Crombach Alpha procedure and a mean error estimate of 0.68 and 0.23 for the general and specific scales, respectively. Results show a very high presence of violent behaviors in dating relationships among adolescents, which manifests itself in reciprocal way and with predominance of the female violence over the male one; that in older adolescents there is greater presence of physical violence that in other levels of age; that to greater duration of the relation, greater probability of  violence; that in greater commitment relationships, particularly of cohabitation, there is more  presence of physical violence, especially towards men; and that violence in the adolescents couples does not show differences by socioeconomic level. It is concluded about urgency of to approach to this problem in school from a psychoeducational perspective.