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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THE GOLD STANDARD PROBLEM IN PARTNER VIOLENCE RESEARCH

People continue to pick and choose the partner violence statistics they want because there is no gold standard of partner violence measurement. Crime surveys like the NCVS have problems due to wording and a framework that still suggests a focus on stranger assaults involving the police, but they at least collect enough incident data to screen out mistaken and inappropriate incidents. Behavioral checklists like the CTS provide a less restrictive framework and better wording, but the lack of incident data leaves much about the rates open to interpretation. Arrest records only count reported incidents and even these appear to be subject to changes in the sociopolitical climate. Both false negatives and false positives are significant problems with all of these data. Findings on differential validity as a function of gender are scarce and show mixed results. Clearer evidence, however, indicates that the item content of measures and differential validity for the assessment of sexual versus physical violence, intimate versus nonintimate assault, and perpetrator versus victim reports affect our ability to establish accurate partner violence rates and to determine gender and other group differences.

Is this a hopeless impasse? Of course not. Measurement technology has lagged far behind research on risk factors, consequences, and interventions for partner violence. It is understandable to wish to explain and solve such a pressing social problem, but we are always going to be hamstringed by methodological limitations if we do not also pursue greater measurement accuracy. Several avenues can improve our assessment of partner violence.

Clarify the Phenomena of Interest

Feminist advocates have historically been the primary group lobbying for broader definitions of intimate physical and sexual violence, in an effort to reduce public tolerance for less injurious acts of physical and sexual coercion (Muehlenhard & Kimes, 1999). From the perspective of knowledge about other forms of violence, it is not surprising, however, that broadening definitions have also increased the percentage of women labeled as perpetrators. There is no simple answer to the question about whether it is better to use broad definitions that minimize the tolerance for any level of aggression, or narrow definitions that avoid trivializing these constructs and blurring the lines between victims and nonvictims (Muehlenhard & Kimes, 1999). At a minimum, we need to be much clearer about the definitions of violence that are used in any particular study and why those definitions were chosen. It would probably also be a significant advantage to the field if we moved beyond simplistic dichotomous categories of "victim" and "nonvictim" and began to consider differences in reported violence, at least along some rough index of severity but preferably in more nuanced categories (Hamby et al., 1996).

Collect Qualitative Incident Data