“Do you make your girlfriend weak at the knees... because she’s scared you’ll hit her?”

This was one of several tough questions directed at teenagers in two recent government-funded media campaigns incorporating TV, cinema, outdoor and online adverts.

The powerful campaigns reached nearly three million 13- to 18-year-old TV viewers¹, challenging their attitudes and helping them to recognise abuse in their relationships.

The first £2 million campaign was launched in February 2010 by the Home Office in response to NSPCC-funded research² led by Christine Barter, Senior Research Fellow at Bristol’s School for Policy Studies.

As the first large-scale study in Great Britain to provide a detailed picture of the incidence and impact of violence within teenage intimate relationships, Barter’s team surveyed 1,350 teenagers from eight schools in England, Scotland and Wales and conducted in-depth interviews with 91 young people.

A quarter of girls aged 13 to 17 reported that they had experienced physical violence from a boyfriend and a third had been pressured into unwanted sexual acts.

The alarming findings of this landmark study were reinforced by follow-up research³ from Barter’s team entitled “Standing on my own two feet”. Focusing on girls and boys from disadvantaged backgrounds, the report found that they appeared to accept violence as a normal, although unwanted, part of a relationship.

With 75 per cent of girls and 50 per cent of boys reporting that they have experienced some form of emotional abuse in relationships, the study suggests levels of violence in teenage relationships may be much higher than previously thought. Fourteen-year-old Jo said her boyfriend had, “only hit me in the face once. He used to push me down the stairs and stuff though.”

Barter says, “Tragically, control and violence seem to be so prevalent in these relationships that girls are unable to recognise its impact – it is an everyday happening”.

Within the wider political agenda of tackling domestic abuse, the research has highlighted the importance of confronting the issue at an early stage which the government is now addressing through campaigns such as this.

Home Office Minister, Lynne Featherstone said: “We need to challenge the attitudes and behaviours that foster an acceptance of abusive relationships by intervening as early as possible.”

The Home Office commissioned a further £1.5 million campaign in September 2011 to help teenagers recognise abusive behaviour before it escalates into physical violence. Challenging them to identify controlling behaviour and to reconsider their own attitudes about acceptable behaviour in relationships, the adverts directed young people to the website thisisabuse.direct.gov.uk.

Teenagers can still visit this website to find information, seek help and chat with peers.

This research continues to inform developments in government policy⁴ and initiate new tools and ideas for child welfare practice including a new Schools Service launched by the NSPCC which educates children and young people about abusive behaviour in relationships, and an award-winning film entitled “Crush” commissioned by the Scottish government which is now included in teaching packs available to all schools in Scotland⁵.

As Shona Bruce from the Reduce Abuse project in West Dunbartonshire puts it, “We regularly quote from the research when delivering sessions to young people on teen abuse, as hearing other young people's voices is a powerful method of raising awareness.”