NCJ Number
225098
Journal
Journal of Family Violence Volume: 23 Issue: 7 Dated: October 2008 Pages: 639-645
Date Published
October 2008
Length
7 pages
Annotation
This study investigated the relationship between gender, sex, controlling behaviors, past victimization, and intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration.
Abstract
Findings reveal that IPV victimization, controlling behavior, violent attitudes, gender, and sex significantly contributed to the prediction of all three types of IPV perpetration. The results have several implications for the development of violence prevention and intervention programs aimed at addressing IPV perpetration for both females and males. The findings that masculine participants reported higher psychological IPV perpetration and feminine participants reported lower psychological IPV perpetration, while controlling for the effects of sex, provides some evidence that masculinity is an important factor in the development of perpetration. Prevention services should focus on reducing the socialization of paring masculinity with violence among youth, including both girls and boys. Development of more services that are inclusive and appropriate for females or male victims of IPV perpetration is necessary. By revealing that IPV perpetration can be carried out by either female or male intimate partners, intervention services would be more likely to accept victims of female perpetration, whether by a male victim in a heterosexual relationship or a female victim in a lesbian relationship. Redeveloping services that include female perpetrators in the model and changing agency policies that include victims of female perpetration would be more appropriate for all victims of IPV. Finally, future qualitative and quantitative research should investigate the relationship of hyper masculinity and intimate terrorism in agency samples in both male and female perpetrators and across cultures. Data were collected from 167 undergraduates enrolled in general psychology in a university in the southern region of the United States. Tables, references