Increased social stress in childhood and young adulthood has a direct link to later increased dating violence, and that young social stress is impacted by things like unemployment and economic worries, according to Murray Straus, professor of sociology and co-director of the University of New Hampshire Family Research Laboratory. The research, based on a 32-nation study, was presented at the conference on “War, Terrorism, and Social Stress: Impacts on Crime and the Criminal Justice System” at the Institute of Criminology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Monday, May 4, 2009. He studied 14,252 university students from 68 universities in 32 nations in an International Dating Violence Study.