Investigated how psychological state influences reporting of early family experiences. University students (n=176) completed measures of psychological distress and childhood family experiences at beginning and end of semester. Found increases in psychological distress associated with recalling parental marital relationship more negatively, more…

Findings from 204 recently divorced mothers revealed that relationship between exposure to harsh parenting as child and subsequent abuse by husband was mediated by woman's involvement in aggressive/deviant behavior. Concluded that women subjected to abusive parenting tended to develop hostile, rebellious orientation and to affiliate with and marry…

Examined the impact of military service and exposure to war trauma on marital patterns and problems in a stratified, probability sample of 1,259 nonveterans, era veterans, and Vietnam veterans. Results focus on rates of marriage, age at first marriage, rates of divorce, and levels of marital satisfaction. (Author/BL)

Presents a short-form scale called the Index of Spouse Abuse (ISA) designed for use in clinical settings to monitor and evaluate progress in treatment. Presents detailed findings concerning the reliability and validity of the ISA, along with details concerning the administration, scoring, and interpretation of the scale. (Author/RC)

Presents a theoretical perspective that integrates elements of social structural and social psychological explanations of spouse abuse. Suggests certain types of status inconsistency and status incompatibility involve very high risks of spouse abuse, particularly life-threatening violence. Other types of inconsistency seem to protect couples from…

Study of college undergraduates (N=267) examined the relationship between corporal punishment inflicted by parents and perpetration of animal abuse. Analyses showed that the association between fathers' corporal punishment and sons' childhood animal cruelty persisted after controlling for child abuse, father-to-mother violence, and father's…

Surveyed students who had viewed parental violence (N=44); who had viewed nonviolent discord (N=43); and whose parents were satisfactorily married (N=77). Results indicated that students who had viewed parental marital violence were significantly more anxious than those from satisfactory relationships, and that women who viewed violence were more…

Explores the effectiveness of modeling acts of aggression and dominance as casual indicators of forms of wife abuse and their effects on women's health, including physical injuries, psychopathology, alterations to psyche, anger, alcohol and drug use, and subsequent general health status. New estimates of the relative severity are provided.…

Compared individual and familial adjustment of 40 battered women and their children with that of 40 community families. Abused women were much more distressed than were community women. Found significant differences between children on internalizing and externalizing subscales of the Child Behavior Checklist. Found no between-group differences in…

Whereas research in the 60s tended to view domestic violence as rare and confined to mentally disturbed and/or poor people, research in the 70s revealed family violence as an extensive phenomenon which could not be explained solely as a consequence of psychological factors or income. (Author)

Addresses effects of reporting bias on spouses' answers to questions by comparing one-partner and couple data on marital violence. Results indicate significant underreporting of violence, and that some predictors of violence are significantly related to underreporting by one spouse. (JPS)

Examined relationship between verbal and physical aggression in marriage, using data from 1985 National Family Violence Re-Survey. Results indicated that when physical aggression occurred, verbal aggression occurred also. Concludes that for male-to-female aggression subculture of violence theory best explains movement from verbal to physical…

Considers whether research on family violence can be applied to clinical practice. Suggests limitations of the knowledge base constrain the application of research on family violence to clinical work, and certain aspects of the research paradigm also limit the transfer of research knowledge to clinical practice. (Author)