Citation

Heckert DA, Gondolf EW. J. Fam. Violence 2000; 15(2): 181-197.

Affiliation

Department of Sociology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Pennsylvania, 15705; Mid-Atlantic Addiction Training Institute, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1098 Oakland Avenue, Indiana, Pennsylvania, 15705

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1023/A:1007594928605

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Self-reports on domestic violence inventories remain the basis of court and clinical decision-making and program outcome evaluations, but little research has investigated the reliability and validity of these self-reports with clinical populations. We investigated the most widely used self-report inventory, the Conflict Tactics Scale, using a multisite database of men admitted to batterer programs and their female partners (n = 840). Concurrent validity was assessed by comparing batterer and victim reports to police incident reports at program intake (n = 145). Victims (29%) were more likely than batterers (19%) to report no assault when the police reports indicated an assault. Batterers were, however, more likely to minimize the severity of assaults than their victims. Reliability was assessed by comparing agreement between men and women at intake and at 12-month follow-up (n = 558). Overall man-woman agreement was higher at follow-up (74%) than at intake (64%). However, occurrence agreement declined substantially (from 61 to 17%), and male underreport and male denial markedly increased. Based on the men's and women's descriptions of the assaults, the women who underreport appear to do so primarily to preserve the relationship and men do so in outright denial. The findings imply the need to collect both men's and women's reports at intake and contradict the notion that agreement increases as a result of the batterer's sensitization to violence in a program. batterer programs - Conflict Tactics Scale - police reports - self-reports - underreport.