“Healthy Relationships”: A Scoping Review of Definitions, Components, and Measures of Healthy Dating Relationships Among Teens and Young Adults

Healthy relationships (HR) education has been widely adopted as an alternative or complement to dating abuse prevention education among youth and young adults. This scoping review evaluated the literature on HR among young people to identify definitions, components, and measures of HR. Both academic, peer-reviewed articles and gray literature were included and documents meeting a priori inclusion criteria were screened for: focus on healthy romantic or intimate relationships; published in English; scholarly publication; published between 2005 and 2021; focus on teens or young adults; and including a definition, components, or measures of HR. A total of 964 non-duplicated documents were identified. After full-text screening and data extraction, 69 articles were included in the review. Definitions, components, and measures of HR varied greatly between documents. While most included documents provided components of HR, only 17 articles included definitions of HR. These definitions largely focused on the components of HR, though some also discussed the nature of HR. In total, 223 components of HR were identified from the included documents, which this analysis distills into 12 categories. In addition, 47 measures were used to measure HR, and measures are rarely repeated across documents, indicating a need to increase consistency in conceptualization and measurement. HR has been implicitly defined by a set of components rather than through the use of theory. To develop standards for HR education, a consistent framework should be identified that includes the multidimensional nature of HR and can be consistently measured.