Mentorship as Teen Dating Violence Prevention: A Family Intervention
This paper proposes a structured mentorship program as an intervention to reduce teen dating violence and build resilience in youth. Beginning with an overview of the documented causes of teen dating violence — including exposure to community and family violence — the paper outlines a multi-phase mentorship model that engages both parents and children through training, consultation, orientation, in-home sessions, and follow-up. The paper argues that such a program builds self-respect, anger management, and conflict mediation skills in teens while simultaneously supporting parents. It also considers motivational strategies to encourage participation and draws on published scholarship to validate the mentorship approach as an effective tool for violence prevention within families and communities.
- Introduction: States paper's purpose and scope
- Causes of Teen Dating Violence: Research-backed causes of youth dating violence
- Description of the Proposed Prevention Program: Multi-phase mentorship program design explained
- How and Why the Program Would Be Beneficial: Community and family benefits of mentorship
- Motivation for Participation: Incentives to encourage program enrollment
- Publications Supporting the Mentorship Approach: Scholarly validation of mentorship interventions
- Conclusion: Summary of findings and program effectiveness
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper is organized around a clearly stated purpose — proposing a single, concrete intervention — and follows through on each stated objective in a logical sequence.
- It uses peer-reviewed and scholarly sources (including a journal article and an edited academic book) to ground both the problem and the proposed solution in documented evidence.
- The proposal includes practical program details (training, consultation, orientation, in-home sessions, closing, and follow-up), giving the intervention credibility and real-world applicability.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied problem-solution structuring: it begins by establishing the problem through cited research, then proposes a detailed multi-phase intervention, evaluates its benefits, addresses barriers to participation, and closes with scholarly validation. This format is typical of social work and public health policy proposals, where evidence-based rationale must accompany programmatic design.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an introduction stating its scope, moves to a causes section grounded in empirical findings, then presents the intervention in phased detail. Subsequent sections address program benefits, participant motivation, and supporting literature, before a brief conclusion that recaps the main findings. Each section addresses one of the questions posed in the introduction, giving the paper a clear and methodical architecture.
Introduction
Teen dating violence has reached epidemic proportions and has become a topic of significant debate in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to identify a single intervention — one that works within the family — that would help build a child's resilience and ability to control his or her temper. The discussion describes the proposed intervention, explains how and why it might be beneficial, and considers what might motivate people to participate fully. The paper also explains why this intervention is likely to be effective and documents publications that advocate the chosen approach. We begin by examining the causes of teen dating violence.
Causes of Teen Dating Violence
The epidemic of teen dating violence is believed to have many different causes. Chief among these is an assailant's prior exposure to violence — specifically, teenagers are more likely to become perpetrators if they have been exposed to violence in their families or in their communities. According to an article published in the journal Social Work Research:
"Malik et al. (1997) found that exposure to violence — community and family — were the strongest predictors of involvement in dating violence. They concluded that demographic variation in dating violence is largely the result of a corresponding difference in exposure to multiple forms of violence. Williams et al. (1998) found that exposure to violence, deteriorated neighborhoods, negative peer environment, and traumatic experiences predicted 29% of the variance in African-American youths' involvement in violent behavior." (Black and Weisz, 2001)
The causes of teen dating violence are well documented. Violence appears to be a learned behavior, one that can potentially be prevented if youth are presented with an appropriate intervention program.
References
Black, B. M., & Weisz, A. N. (2001). Evaluating a sexual assault and dating violence prevention program for urban youths. Social Work Research, 25(2), 89.
Osofsky, J. D. (Ed.). (1997). Children in a violent society. New York: Guilford Publications.
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