More on the measurement of domestic violence
This follows on from a discussion here.
Contrary to earlier studies, some of the broad-based surveys are now showing lower rates of partner violence by women than by men.
The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study has provided data for several papers reporting on partner violence. Two of these are:
Magdol L, Moffitt T, Caspi A, Newman D, Fagan J, Silva P. (1997) "Gender differences in partner violence in a birth cohort of 21 year olds: bridging the gap between clinical and epidemiological approaches", Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology; 65:68-78
and:
Martin J, Nada-Raja S, Langley J, Feehan M, McGee R, Clarke J, Begg D, Hutchinson-Cervantes M, Moffitt T, and Rivara F (1998) "Physical assault in New Zealand: the experience of 21 year old men and women in a community sample", New Zealand Medical Journal, 111:158-60 (May)
The former found that more women (37%) than men (22%) reported perpetrating partner violence; more men (34%) than women (27%) reported being a victim. In contrast, the latter reported partner physical assault victimisation rates of 3% for men and 11% for women.
The marked difference arises due to differences in the definitions of violence. Magdol et al. measure violence in terms of hits, etc.. Martin et al. take a subset of this violence, limiting themselves to actions, attempts and threats of deliberate harm. In other words, responses depended on participants' perceptions of actual or intended injury.
It may be appropriate to look at violence in a disaggregated rather than an aggregated way. "Deliberate intention to harm" might also be important as identifying one dimension of violence, but it is questionable whether we are well served by singling out only those cases which meet this criterion, while ignoring all others.
The approach raises some issues:
1. Will men and women respond differently to questions on harm and hurt, especially in the context of violence by the other gender?
Magdol et al., using the standard definitions of violence found that male perpetration rates are less than female victimisation rates for both minor and severe violence and overall. Although the men and women are not from the same couples, this suggests that men understate or women overstate men-to-women violence, or both.
They also found female perpetration rates greater than male victimisation rates for minor violence, but less for severe violence. This suggests that men understate or women overstate women-to-men minor violence, but not major violence. However, with major violence, women claim to be victims at over twice the rate at which men claim to be perpetrators, whereas men's victimisation rate is only 14% higher than women's perpetration rate for severe violence.
In brief, women can be expected to perceive events as partner violence at higher rates than men. If such differences are observed with a broad definition of violence, similar or larger differences might be anticipated with a definition restricted to only cases which harm.
2. If only certain types of violence are included, have the right ones been chosen?
Lapsley H (1993) suggests that it is inappropriate to measure partner violence in terms of "hits" (see here). She contends that violence against women differs from that against men due to the "an atmosphere of fear and coercion" (p.34) which it generates. We could consider other dimensions also, such as, "Was the violence intended to control you?" or, "Did the violence affect your perception of the relationship?" In other words the whole psychological dimension.
Violence does not have to cause fear to be psychologically harmful. Pearson (1997) (reviewed here) suggests that people tolerate abusive relationships because they believe that they can stand them, with the abused person being the stronger partner trying to hold things together. This is a very different perspective on violence than the "victim of patriarchal power and control" model.
3. What about the effects on children of observing domestic violence between adults?
Maxwell (1994) suggests that children are harmed by seeing domestic violence, citing supporting studies from overseas. (Maxwell G M (1994) "Children and Family Violence: the Unnoticed Victims", Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 2, July, 81-96)
It is then the children's perceptions of the violence which are important, not those of the adults.
4. What about violence towards children?
Partner violence and domestic violence are not synonymous. Women are responsible for a high proportion of child maltreatment, including child physical abuse.
US child abuse is discussed in US Department of Health and Human Services (1998) Child Maltreatment 1996: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. Table 2.8 shows that sexual abuse is the only category with a majority of male perpetrators, but still 28.5 per cent of perpetrators were female. The data show that women were 55.3% of child physical abuse perpetrators, 71.9% for neglect, 78.3% for medical neglect, and 57% for emotional maltreatment. There is also a "fact sheet", summarising the main points of the report.
It might be significant that a woman shows a tendency to be violent to a partner even if he is unlikely to be harmed, in that such a tendency might also translate into violence against a child.
Concluding comments:
While it may be important to distinguish between different types of domestic violence and abuse, it is not appropriate to be too selective.
Note another example of the use of selective definitions here.
Stuart Birks
Written 8 June 1998, last modified 9 June 1998