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Measuring gender differences in partner violence: implications from research on other forms of violent and socially undesirable behavior

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, June, 2005 by Sherry L. Hamby

If you enter "partner violence" and related terms into PsycInfo (American Psychological Association, 2004), you get almost 6000 unique references. Enter "crime" or "marriage" and you get approximately 20,000 each. Given the explosion of social science research, it is not surprising that the field of partner violence, like so many social science disciplines, has become increasingly insular as scholars struggle to keep up with the volume of research (Hamby & Finkelhor, 2000). Still, no matter the reason, insularity comes with a price, and nowhere are the effects seen more keenly than in theoretical controversies such as the debate over violence by women. This debate has been central to the field and has been an important impetus to theory (Johnson, 1995), measurement (Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, & Sugarman, 1996), epidemiology (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000), and almost every other topic of study.

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Nonetheless, in some respects we are scarcely further than we were in 1975 when the first National Family Violence Survey (NFVS; Straus & Gelles, 1990) found that women reported similar levels of violence as men, a finding replicated in dozens of studies comparing women's and men's reports of violence (Archer, 2000). Yet the debate is much the same, with questions commonly raised about differences in context, motive, injury, and measurement in ways that are not that different from when the first data emerged nearly 30 years ago. There is considerable entrenchment, as people who believe that partner violence is gender neutral are as resistant to data suggesting otherwise as are those who believe that partner violence is primarily a problem of men victimizing women.

Rather than review the same arguments about the same data again, the best chance for moving forward seems to be in broadening the framework of the discussion. Both violence and gender are much discussed in other fields, and numerous methodologies have been developed to study violence and other sensitive behaviors. This paper will outline findings from criminology and the measurement of sensitive or socially undesirable behaviors that can shed light on the issue of gender and partner violence.

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN OTHER FORMS OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE

Data on many different types of violence indicate that men perpetrate more violence than women, although women do perpetrate a substantial minority of violent acts. The federal government regularly collects data on interpersonal violence, including monitoring of arrests and child protection cases as well as several very large self-report surveys. As with attempts to measure partner violence, obtaining precise, bias-free estimates of other forms of violence is challenging. First, a summary of the data and the gender differences found therein is presented, followed by a discussion of methodological issues for these data sources.

Physical Assault and Robbery

The best criminology data indicate that men commit more violent crimes than women. There are two major sources of crime data in the United States: the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS; Rennison & Rand, 2003) and arrest data. The NCVS is one of the largest ongoing surveys in the world, with more than 76,000 interviews completed in 2002 and data going back to 1972. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) gathers arrest data from almost every local, state, and federal jurisdiction. With 94% coverage of the US population, it is essentially population data, not a sample (FBI, 2003). The most recent NCVS data (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003) indicate that men commit 79% of assaults and robberies. Arrest data show a nearly identical pattern, with men comprising 77% of those arrested for assault and robbery (FBI, 2003). See Table I for a breakdown by type of offense and gender. According to the NCVS, most victims of these crimes are men, too, but the gender difference there is much less pronounced--55% of victims are men, and 45% women (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003).

Homicide

The FBI also produces annual homicide statistics from police reports. It is generally thought that homicides suffer from less underreporting to the police than most other crime. In 2001 (most recent data available), most murderers (90%) were male. Most murder victims were also male (76%), but as with robbery and assault, the gender difference is less pronounced for victims than it is for offenders (Rennison & Rand, 2003).

Intimate Partner Homicide

Intimate partner homicides comprise approximately 10% of all US murders, according to FBI data. The gender difference in partner homicide is less pronounced than for total homicides--men perpetrate approximately three-fourths of intimate homicides versus approximately 90% of all murders (see Table I). The gender difference in partner homicide is also less pronounced in the United States than in some other countries (Archer, 2000). Easy gun availability in the United States is the likely reason for this, just as it explains why the total US homicide rate is so much higher than for other wealthy, industrialized countries (Hemenway, Shinoda-Tagawa, & Miller, 2002). Guns are the murder weapons in most (63%) US homicides (Rennison & Rand, 2003), including intimate homicides (Aldridge & Browne, 2003). In the United Kingdom, in contrast, most partner homicides are from stabbings or strangling (Aldridge & Browne, 2003). The size and strength difference between men and women make it much harder for a woman to stab or strangle a man, both of which generally require up-close physical contact. Even though gun availability reduces the impact of the size and strength differences between men and women, US men still kill their partners three times as often as women do.

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Measuring gender differences in partner violence: implications from research on other forms of violent and socially undesirable behavior

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, June, 2005 by Sherry L. Hamby

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