NCJ Number
216177
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 12 Issue: 11 Dated: November 2006 Pages: 1073-1077
Date Published
November 2006
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article offers a commentary on an article by Sarah Cook and Lisa Goodman (contained in the same journal) that developed and tested a new measurement instrument for domestic violence: the Brief Coercion and Conflict Scales.
Abstract
The author asserts that the measurement scale developed and tested by Cook and Goodman offers a way of understanding women’s assessment of the interpersonal context in which their abuse experiences occur. Indeed, the Brief Coercion and Conflict Scales address the need for measurement tools that are able to evaluate the context, meaning, and motives driving the perpetration of violence against women in the home. The validation study of the Brief Coercion and Conflict Scales verified that the dimensions of conflict and coercion differently predicted women’s well-being and their use of strategic responses to the violence, even after controlling for severity of violence. Moreover, they found that the use of coercion within a relationship was associated with women’s strategic responses to the violence and to their posttraumatic stress symptoms. These findings by Cook and Goodman are significant because they support the theoretical framework proposed by Michael Johnson (in this journal edition) that there are four main types of intimate partner violence that are based on the interaction of violence and patterns of conflict and control within the interpersonal relationship. Future research should attempt to replicate these findings within samples from the general population as well as for select groups, such as teenagers and ethnic minorities. References