Inside Dating Relationships Involving Violence End Now: Participants’ perspectives at a 6-month follow-up

Dating Relationships Involving Violence End Now (DRIVEN) is a recently developed programme that is geared to Latino college students. The current study highlights DRIVEN participants’ perceptions of the programme at six months post-programme. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 49 programme participants. Interviews were coded using conventional qualitative analysis with a team of seven researchers and resulted in three main themes. Psychological factors included group experience (safety, group cohesion and learning from others) and the impact of group leaders (characteristics and skills). Educational factors include learning about dating violence (DV) information and factors (learning about DV, the influence of Latino culture and Latino gender roles) and learning effective communication skills. The last theme of age group factors stressed personal growth such as gaining self-awareness and learning how to help others. The themes identified by participants parallel several research findings on the aspects of effective programmes. These aspects, grounded within a group format for a culturally specific population, aid in dating violence prevention efforts.