Adolescent Dating Violence - Chapter 2: Theories on the Causation of Partner Abuse Perpetration

The key to effective dating abuse prevention is choosing determinants to address from an empirically supported theoretical model to design the strategy. In the past century, dozens of theories about causes of partner abuse perpetration have been proposed and tested. In this chapter, 20 theories are reviewed and summarized, prefaced by a brief discussion of definitional considerations and typologies of partner abuse and of partner abuse perpetrators. The implications of these theories for prevention programming are discussed.