Batterers

Assessment of IPV

In extreme cases, IPV may reach the attention of others through calls to domestic violence hotlines or law enforcement agencies. More typically, IPV is a private affair, occurring in the home with the only witnesses being the two partners and their children. Most researchers rely on partners' self-reports to identify the occurrence and extent of IPV. Many couples experiencing IPV do not label the behavior as violence, abuse, or battering. There are also potential problems of social desirability (e.g., Will someone admit to a socially sanctioned behavior such as violence?) and fear (e.g., Will a battered woman choose not to reveal her abuse out of fear of retaliatory violence from her partner?). Given such issues, some researchers rely on interviews, believing that clinical sensitivity is needed to detect violence.

The most widely used questionnaires are behavioral checklists (such as the Conflict Tactics Scale by Murray Straus and colleagues) that directly ask if particular behaviors have ever occurred, thus avoiding the problem of labeling such behaviors as violence or abuse. Such checklists ask whether each partner has engaged in a variety of behaviors (e.g., “pushed,” “threatened with a knife or gun”) in the context of relationship conflict. Other questionnaire measures of related constructs (e.g., emotional abuse, sexual abuse) may also be used to supplement questions about physical aggression. Regardless of method used (interview or questionnaires), partners should complete such measures independently to minimize concerns of one partner pressuring the other to answer in certain ways.

Partners may not agree on the occurrence, nature, or extent of violence. This discrepancy may reflect a trend for perpetrators to be less likely to report their own use of violence than victims to report their partner's aggression. In addition, for both perpetration and victimization, women are more likely to report IPV than men. Many experts assume that batterers in legal trouble or in court-referred treatment are likely to minimize and deny their perpetration of violence. Given such factors, it is best to ask both partners about their own and their partner's relationship violence. Because the risks of failing to detect violence when it is occurring are generally considered greater than the risks of assuming violence is occurring when it may not be, the standard practice is to assume the occurrence of violence if either partner reports it.

Although behavioral checklists have proven reliable, they may not fully assess the context of the violence. For example, behavioral checklists consistently demonstrate that men and women engage in violence at similar prevalence rates, but such data do not allow one to equate male and female violence, as the questionnaires do not thoroughly assess consequences (e.g., women are more likely than men to be injured; fear of the partner) or context (e.g., initiation of violence to control the partner versus self-defense). Thus, many researchers and clinicians advocate that once violence is identified, more detailed questionnaires or interviews should be administered to better understand the qualitative aspects of the aggression that is occurring and its impact on both partners.

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