NCJ Number
122775
Date Published
1990
Length
20 pages
Annotation
Difficulties in defining and measuring wife beating and child abuse are examined, with emphasis on the role of injuries and frequency of assault as criteria for identification.
Abstract
Violence is defined as an act carried out to cause physical pain or injury. This definition of violence is synonymous with the term physical aggression used in social psychology. Assault is defined as the unlawful and intentional infliction of injury. Other dimensions that must be considered in understanding violence are assault severity, level of physical injury inflicted, motivation for violence, whether the motivation is to cause physical pain or to cause injury or death, and normative legitimacy of the violent act. The conceptualization of abuse by the Conflicts Tactics Scales (CTS) is based on identifying certain acts as inherently abusive, regardless of whether an injury occurs. Thus, CTS measures of abuse employ normative criteria regarding inappropriate behavior by parents and spouses. An important potential problem with measuring wife beating and child abuse on the basis of assaults, regardless of whether an injury resulted, is the possibility that cases with injury may differ from cases where there were assaults but no injuries. The 1985 National Family Violence Survey revealed that about 12 percent of American women were assaulted by their husband or partner and that these 644 women were assaulted an average of 6 times during the year. However, research based on clinical samples may have limited applicability because those who seek or receive treatment are often not representative of the entire population manifesting the problem. 19 references.