Predicting Risk Taking Behavior by Exposure to Domestic Violence Among Khorram-Abad Adolescents

A wide range of children and adolescents in the world is witnessing physical violence or a threat to doing it by their parents. According to previous studies, the exposure of children and adolescents to domestic violence has been linked to extroverted and antisocial behavior and to committing violent behavior. The aim of this study is to predict the risk taking by adolescents in Khorram-Abad through exposure to domestic violence.
The present study was a descriptive, analytical and correlation study. The study sample was 379 male and female students in grades 10 and 11 of high schools who were selected applying stratified and random sampling from high schools of two regions of KhorramAbad city. The scale of child exposure to domestic violence and the scale of risk taking among Iranian adolescences were used in order to collect data.
Findings: The prevalence of violence of the father against mother was 14%, the parents’ dispute was 35.9% and the risk taking was 74.4%.
There was a positive correlation between all aspects of domestic violence exposure and risk taking. The exposure rate of violence in boys was higher than girls. Also, 18% of risk raking variance was explained by exposure to domestic violence.
The results of the present study illustrate the importance of domestic violence exposure and its impact on increasing the risk taking by adolescent.