NCJ Number
129486
Date Published
1990
Length
21 pages
Annotation
Although an extensive amount of research has focused on individual, relational, and cultural factors that place women at risk of violence, less attention has been paid to the prevention of wife assault.
Abstract
Two national studies report that between 11 and 12 percent of couples experience one or more acts of wife assault during a given 12-month period. This translates to an estimated 1.6 to 2 million women who are targets of assault each year. The harmful consequences of wife assault are broader still when the effects on children who witness these assaults are taken into account. Because the public health model of prevention developed in response to clearly defined physical disease entities, there are problems in applying the primary prevention concept to social phenomena such as wife assault. For example, one problem involves whether prevention should be primarily directed to offenders, victims, or relationships. Much of the research on wife assault has been inadequate for the purpose of identifying risk markers and for designing appropriate primary prevention measures. In order to identify individuals at risk of assaulting or being assaulted, a case comparison research design is suggested. Case comparisons are employed to assess risk markers and the role of risk markers in discriminating assaulted from nonassaulted women. It is shown that relationships marked by wife assault experience higher conflict levels, and the conflicts involve more issues than nonassaultive relationships. Most empirical evidence points to a clear connection between wife assault and low family income, although evidence does not indicate that wife assault victims are any more likely than other women to have been exposed to family violence as children. 46 references and 2 figures