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http://vaw.sagepub.com/Violence Against Women
http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/9/3/278The online version of this
article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/1077801202250072
2003 9: 278Violence Against WomenEdward W. Gondolf and Angie K.
Beeman
Women's Accounts of Domestic Violence Versus Tactics-Based
Outcome Categories
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10.1177/1077801202250072ARTICLEGondolf, Beeman / WOMEN’S
ACCOUNTS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCEVIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / March
2003
Women’s Accounts of Domestic ViolenceVersus Tactics-Based
Outcome Categories
EDWARD W. GONDOLFMid-Atlantic Addiction Training Institute
ANGIE K. BEEMANUniversity of Connecticut
This study compared battered women’s accounts of violence with
tactics-based outcomesto assess the measurement limitations in
predicting recurring violence. Accounts of 536incidents were
collected from 299 women at batterer program intake and at
3-monthintervals over a 15-month follow-up. Each incident was coded
using a sequential, situa-tional model of violence, and the
incident codings were summarized for each woman. Thecomponents of
violent incidents did not correspond to any particular
tactics-based out-comes. The female partners of men who repeatedly
reassaulted them were, however, lessassertive than those of
non-reassaulters. A small subgroup did commit unrelenting
andexcessive violence across the reassault categories.
Keywords: accounts of violence; domestic violence measurement;
violence prediction;methodology
One of the ongoing issues in domestic violence research is the
cate-gorization of abusive incidents. This categorization is
especiallyimportant to prediction studies of reabuse or reassault
amongdomestic violence perpetrators (see Saunders, 1995, for a
sum-mary).1 There are increasing efforts to identify the most
danger-ous perpetrators, those who are most likely to repeatedly
assaulttheir female partners and cause the most harm (e.g., D.
Dutton,
278
AUTHORS’ NOTE: The authors wish to thank Robert White for his
assistance in devel-oping the coding for violent incidents and Jeff
Rowles for his coding and summary of inci-dents. Both were working
as graduate assistants at the Mid-Atlantic Addiction
TrainingInstitute. The research was supported through grants from
the Centers for Disease Controland Prevention, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (Grant No. R49/CCR310525-02), and the
National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice (Grant
No.98-WT-VX-0014). The conclusions do not necessarily represent the
official view of the Cen-ters for Disease Control or the National
Institute of Justice.
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Bodnarchuk, Kropp, Hart, & Ogloff, 1997; Goodman, Dutton,
&Bennett, 2000; Hanson & Wallace-Capretta, 2000; Jones
&Gondolf, 2001). Unfortunately, research has produced
relativelyweak predictions of these sorts of perpetrators (D.
Dutton &Kropp, 2000; Limandri & Sheridan, 1995).
Amain limitation in this research is arguably determining
whatspecifically to predict. What categories of abuse or assault
out-comes best represent the nature of the violence to be
predicted?The prediction research has relied primarily on
tactics-based cate-gories of reassault that confound the answer to
this key question.Several domestic violence researchers argued that
these sorts ofcategories face a “measurement trap” that
misrepresents thenature of domestic violence incidents and hinders
research in thefield (e.g., Smith, Smith, & Earp, 1999).
Women’s accounts of vio-lence suggest a broader conception of
incidents (Heckert, Matula,& Gondolf, 2000), whereas the
validity studies of tactics-basedmeasures indicate a high
association with severity, injury, andquality of life (Straus,
1990). We explored the narrative accounts ofdomestic violence
incidents to identify the need for further cate-gorizations and
also to access the extent of any discrepanciesbetween tactics-based
and account-based categorizations. For thelatter, we compared the
accounts of incidents with tactics-basedcategories derived from the
same group of women.
PREDICTION RESEARCH
Most prediction research of domestic violence perpetrators
hasemployed dichotomous outcomes of no reassault and
reassaultduring a follow-up period of 6 months to 1 year (e.g.,
Hilton, Har-ris, & Rice, 2001; Jones & Gondolf, 2001).
These categories havetypically used the aggression subscale of the
Conflict Tactics Scale(Straus, 1979) to identify reassault. Anumber
of domestic violenceresearchers have argued for more nuanced and
extensive mea-surement (e.g., Dobash, Dobash, Cavanagh, &
Lewis, 1998;Gondolf, 1997a; Saunders, 1995). Some researchers have
usedindex or scale scores that suggest a continuum of severity
basedon a summation of the items in the Conflict Tactics Scale or a
simi-lar abuse scale (e.g., D. Dutton et al., 1997). Others have
incorpo-rated scales with additional violence items, controlling
behaviors,
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injuries, and quality of life (Dobash, Dobash, Cavanagh, &
Lewis,2000; Gondolf, 2001).
Researchers attempting to predict recurring violence
amongpreviously violent psychiatric patients have specifically
pro-moted the use of multiple outcomes based on behavioral
tactics(Monahan, 1984; Mulvey & Lidz, 1993; Steadman et al.,
1994).Rather than reassault versus no reassault, various categories
havebeen recommended, such as no abuse, threats, reassault,
andsevere reassault. These researchers have argued that such
catego-ries are easiest to use in clinical practice and are
conceptuallymore objective or concrete.
Even with these improvements, the prediction of continuedabuse
remains very weak both in terms of variance explained andcorrect
classification (for a review, see Heckert & Gondolf, 2001).The
most complex prediction study to date is with a multiple out-come
of no abuse (19% of sample), controlling behavior or verbalabuse
(26%), threats of violence (20%), one reassault (12%), orrepeated
reassault (23%) during a 15-month follow-up period tobatterer
program intake (n = 499) (Heckert & Gondolf, in press).This
study categorized the cumulative outcomes based on inter-views with
the perpetrators’ female partners, using items drawnfrom the
Conflict Tactics Scales and Maltreatment of Women Scale(Tolman,
1989) (for measurement discussion, see Gondolf, 2001).
Use of multiple outcomes did improve the prediction of
recur-ring abuse over dichotomous outcomes (any reassault versus
noreassault) but not substantially. The optimal equation based
onintake information correctly predicted 40% of the any
reassaultoutcomes versus no reassault. The equation for multiple
out-comes correctly predicted 58% of the repeated reassault but
hadan overall correct classification of only 42%. The correct
classifica-tion rate for repeated reassault is still only 8% better
than 50-50chance.
REVISED OUTCOMES
One possible reason for this weak prediction is that the
multi-ple outcomes may not fully or accurately capture the nature
andcomplexity of violent incidents. Other domestic
violenceresearchers have urged consideration of the constellation
of abuse(Dobash et al., 2000), the dynamics of abuse (Eisikovits,
Winstok,
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& Gelles, 2002), and the sequential process of abusive
incidents(M. Dutton, 1999). The underlying assumption is that
domesticviolence is a contextual process with a development of
patternsover time (Dobash et al., 1998; M. Dutton, 1999) rather
than a dis-crete event with “a defined set of behaviors” (M.
Dutton, 1999,p. 195). According to impressions of women’s clinical
accounts orstories, the context, the sequence or combination of
tactics, the tac-tics’ impact, and strategies of response and
resistance are theessential components of a domestic violence event
(Cascardi &Vivian, 1995; M. Dutton, 1999; Eisikovits et al.,
2002). These com-ponents reflect the sequential, situational model
of violent inci-dents promoted in prediction research of violent
psychiatricpatients (Monahan, 1996; Mulvey & Lidz, 1993;
Steadman, 1982).This model assumes that violent incidents generally
proceed withcontextual issues, precipitant causes, incident
dynamics, conse-quences, and responses to the violence.
To explore this possibility of alternative categorizations of
vio-lence outcomes, we reviewed and coded the narrative accounts
ofdomestic violence incidents collected as part of the
predictionresearch of multiple-outcome categories mentioned above.
Wesummarize the components of violent incidents proposed in
otherresearch and also characterize the cumulative pattern of
violenceover the follow-up period in case summaries. These incident
andcase summaries are compared with the tactics-based outcome
cat-egories in an effort to identify alternative, additional, or
revisedoutcomes. Are there other ways to categorize the violent
out-comes that might more accurately represent the range of
inci-dents? Do the tactics-based categories need to be replaced or
sim-ply modified?
METHOD
SAMPLE
The accounts of violence were obtained through a
multisiteevaluation of batterer programs in four cities:
Pittsburgh, Hous-ton, Dallas, and Denver (Gondolf, 1997b, 1999).
Asample of 210 to220 men was recruited from each of the four
programs for a totalof 854 men. These men were the first 20 to 25
men appearing formonthly program intake over a 10-month period in
1995. As part
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of the evaluation, research assistants interviewed the female
part-ners of the men at program intake and every 3 months for a
periodof 15 months. The interviews were conducted by phone
followingextensive tracking and safety procedures (Gondolf, 2000).
Newpartners, as well as the initial partners, were interviewed
whenidentified by the men or by the initial partners. New
partnerswere interviewed for 113 of the men (14% of the men
withresponding partners).
Apartner was contacted for 561 of the 854 men (68%) for at
least12 months of the full 15-month follow-up period, and 190 of
the584 respondents (33%) reported a physically abusive
incident.However, some women may have skipped one of the
follow-upintervals or mailed in a written interview during the
follow-up.At least one partner was interviewed over the phone at
each of thefive follow-up intervals (i.e., every 3 months) for 348
men. Thesecases with complete data were separated into categories
based onthe extent of physically abusive incidents during the
follow-up.These categories were the basis of the multiple outcomes
used inour prediction research.
A man who did not reassault during the follow-up was classi-fied
as a non-reassaulter (n = 145). If the partner described
onereassault during the 15-month follow-up period, the man
wasclassified as a one-time reassaulter (n = 85). If a man’s
partnerdescribed an incident in more than one of the five follow-up
inter-vals, he was classified as a repeat reassaulter (n = 70). The
criterionfor repeat reassaulters was used because women were
asked,under the time constraints of interviewing, to report on only
themost severe incident during the 3-month interval. Also,
reassaultover more than one follow-up period suggests a sustained
patternof reassault. Repeated reassaults reported within one
3-monthfollow-up interval might indicate a short burst of assaults
or inci-dents linked together.2
DATA COLLECTION
The accounts of abuse were obtained through interviews withwomen
every 3 months for a period of 15 months. During theseinterviews,
the women were asked, “During the past 3 months,did your partner
push, grab, slap, hit, or physically attack you inany way?” The
interviewers followed with a more specific list of
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physically abusive behaviors (i.e., “Did he pull your hair?”
“Burnyou?” “Squeeze your neck?”). The women were specificallyasked
to describe any incidents of sexual abuse and to recall thenumber
of different incidents or separate times of physical abusethat had
taken place over the past 3 months. If any type of physicalabuse
had taken place since the last interview period, the womenwere
asked, “Tell me what happened in the most severe inci-dent?” The
women responded in narrative form, describing thecircumstances
surrounding the incidents, the incidents’precipitants, the actual
abuse, and the actions they and their part-ner took following the
incidents. When needed, interviewersprobed the women, asking
specifically about circumstances, inci-dents’ precipitants, and
ending responses.
There were a total of 536 incident accounts among the 299women
in the final sample. These included reports of the inci-dents
preceding program intake (i.e., one for each of the 299 men)and 237
incidents described during the follow-up for 154 menwho were either
one-time or repeat reassaulters. The repeat re-assaulters had an
average of 2.2 incidents during the follow-up. The length of the
transcribed accounts varied. Approxi-mately 50% of the women
described the incidents in four- tofive-sentence paragraphs, while
about 25% offered summaries ofapproximately one page, and another
25% responded in one ortwo sentences. The longer the account, the
more severe the abuse;however, shorter accounts also were sometimes
indicative ofsevere abuse that women did not feel comfortable
disclosing infull detail.
INCIDENT CODING
To analyze the women’s accounts of abuse, we developed acoding
scheme based on a sequential, situational model of vio-lence. This
model reflects the conceptualization of violence as aprocess
related to situations rather than a singular behavioral act(e.g., a
punch). It compiles the components put forth by both thedomestic
violence and psychiatric violence researchers men-tioned in the
introduction. The model begins with the circum-stances and issues
of the incident, follows with the interaction anddynamics of the
incident, and ends with the man’s or woman’sresponse to the
incident.
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Research assistants first identified the circumstances
surround-ing the incident. These included the relationship status
of the manand woman, background issues (e.g., lack of finances,
treatmentof children, alleged affairs), place and individuals
present, pre-ceding conflict (e.g., an escalating argument,
threats, break-in),alcohol and drug use, and the man’s emotional
state (e.g., mad,depressed, disoriented, coercive). The assistants
also coded theprecipitant or immediate cause of the physical abuse
(e.g., lack offinances, treatment of children, alleged affairs).
Second, the assis-tants indicated the dynamics of the incident
(e.g., man firstassaulted woman, man assaults and woman reacts by
assaultingman) and the pattern of the incident (e.g., a singular
tactic of physi-cal abuse, multiple tactics). Third, the assistants
identified thewoman’s or man’s response to the physical abuse
(e.g., thewoman submits or gives in, leaves the residence, calls
for help)and any reported injury, property damage, or other
consequence.After coding the components, the assistants also rated
the overallseverity of the incident on a 1 to 10 scale with 10
being extremelysevere.
The most complex and important coding was of the dynamicsof the
incident and pattern of the tactics. These aspects are notaccounted
for in the widely used behavioral inventories, such asthe Conflict
Tactics Scale, but arguably capture a process thatreflects more of
the nature and severity of the incident. For exam-ple, the dynamic
coded as “man assaults/woman reacts/manescalates” describes an
incident where the man first assaulted thewoman, she reacted in
some manner to the assault, and the manescalated his abuse in
response to her reaction. Some men, on theother hand, stop their
violence after the women react to the initialtactic. An incident is
often a combination of assaultive tactics werepresented in the
pattern of tactics: singular, multiple, chained,series, and
multiseparate. The categories were distinguished bythe amount of
time that passed between the tactics and the rela-tionship of these
tactics to each other.
For example, a chained incident was one where a short
breakoccurred between the tactics, but the tactics were in
succession.The following account details chained tactics: “He
grabbed myarm. I pulled away and turned around to get the keys. He
spit onme.” These tactics were in succession, but there was a short
breakbetween the two acts of physical abuse (i.e., grabbing her arm
and
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spitting on her) when the woman pulled away from the man
andtried to get her keys.
In a series, the break in incidents was longer, and the
incidentswere not in succession. These incidents, however, were
related.The following is an account of a series incident:
He got real upset with me over an incident with the dog. He
flippedout, screamed, and shouted. An hour or so later, he came
into thehouse to cook and started all over again, yelling and
screaming,making threats to kill me. I grabbed the phone and told
him that Iwas calling 911 and started taking the dogs outside. He
pushed meas I left.
In this account, there was an hour break between the
incidents,and the incidents were related. When the batterer came
back to thehouse an hour later, he “started all over again” and was
upsetabout the same issue as he was previously.
The break in physical abuse with multiseparate incidents
lastedfor hours or days, as with the series; however, the incidents
in amultiseparate case were not directly related. The following is
anexample of such an incident:
We were arguing over a phone number I found in his wallet.
Jimwas very angry, kept me from going to work that day, wouldn’t
letme leave. I was afraid of him. He threatened to hurt me if I
left. Thatevening, he pushed, slapped, and pulled my hair. The
followingmorning I got up early and left to file a temporary
protective order.The next day, he came to the house and tried to
pick a fight with amale friend of mine who was there. I called the
cops on him.
In this case, the incidents, which occurred over the period of
2days, were not directly related. They seemed to start for
differentreasons and under different circumstances.
CASE-LEVEL CODING
A case-level summary coding scheme was developed to sum-marize
the incidents committed by an individual man over time(i.e., the
incident prior to program intake and any incidents com-mitted
during the follow-up). There were four major componentsin our
scheme, which we categorized as women’s issues,batterers’ problems,
incident pattern, and violence type. The first
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two components, women’s issues and batterers’ problems,
sum-marized the issues, precipitants, and circumstances of the
inci-dents. The incident pattern and violence type summarized
thedynamics of the incidents, the pattern of tactics, and responses
ofthe men and women.
Women’s issues included the degree to which they were
submis-sive, protective of their partners, trying to leave their
partners,trying to control the violence, and seeking help. We also
describedthe degree to which women received poor or improper
help.Batterers’ problems included the degree to which they abused
alco-hol or drugs and were manipulative, possessive, angry, and
con-sistently abusive. For each of these components, the
researchassistants rated their overall impressions on a scale of
consistentlylow, medium, or high. These components could also be
rated asdecreasing, mixed, increasing, or uncertain.
The incident patterns were coded either as consistent,
deesca-lating, improvement and reabuse, or escalating. For
example,incident patterns were indicated as deescalating abuse if
thephysically abusive behavior lessened over the course of the
15-month follow-up period. Violence types were coded as
unrelent-ing, severe and unstopped, severe and stopped, less
severe, ormixed in severity. “Unrelenting” violence involved
batterers whowere consistently abusive and who did nothing to curb
their abu-sive behavior. These cases involved severe violence,
often contin-uing past the point of injury, and excessive abusive
behaviors,such as constant stalking or harassment. The following
accountresembles the abuse of an excessive, unrelenting
batterer:
He had been drinking at a bar, and I walked in. I got up to
leave. Hefollowed me out and pushed me on top of someone’s truck.
Hepunched me repeatedly in the face, pulled my hair, ripped
myclothes, punched me in the ribs. Then, he walked over to my
newtruck and scratched both sides up and down with his keys. I
ranback into the bar bloody and swollen. He chased after me, but
abouncer stopped him at the door.
Even after the batterer had severely beaten the woman, he
stillengaged in violent behavior by damaging the woman’s
vehicle.
The cases of “severe and unstopped” violence and “severe
andstopped” violence differed in terms of whether the abuse and
vio-lence escalated or was contained. Cases of severe and
unstopped
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violence more closely resembled unrelenting violence than
didcases of severe and stopped violence. The difference between
thesevere and unstopped violence and the previous category of
unre-lenting violence is in the severity and extent of the
escalating tac-tics. The following is an example of severe and
unstoppedviolence:
If he came in the house and found me on the phone, he
wouldsnatch the phone away from me, throw me up against the wall,
andsay, “Who in the hell were you talking to.” He would also
punchme in the face. I would end up with a busted lip.
In the cases of severe and stopped violence, the incidentstended
to be contained. The man appeared to stop or interrupt hisviolence
before causing apparent injury. In these cases, thewomen often
stated that their partners “snapped out of it” or“realized what he
was doing” and left the situation. In “lesssevere” violence the
tactics were not as severe (e.g., push, shove,slap), not injurious,
generally singular, and the batterer did notstalk or harass the
woman. The following is an example: “I and thebaby were in the
bathroom. He pushed his way in the door andpushed me up against the
wall. Nothing else happened.”
After the case-level coding, the research assistants also
notedtheir overall impressions of the violence and
distinguishingaspects of the cases. To establish intercoder
reliability, a secondcoder was introduced to the coding process.
The second coderreviewed and discussed the definitions and examples
of the dif-ferent categories and practiced by coding 10 cases and
comparinghis or her results to the initial coder. At times during
this codingprocess, it was necessary to add new categories or
adjust defini-tions. The second coder coded another 20 cases,
achieving aninterrater reliability of greater than .80 on each
component.
ANALYSIS
The codes were entered into a computerized database for
anal-ysis. We first explored the possibility that incident
componentswere associated with a particular pattern of tactics. The
objectivewas to see (a) if the circumstances, issues, and
precipitants con-tributed to a specific pattern of tactics and (b)
whether there weredistinguishing patterns of violence that might be
considered
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outcome categories of their own. The incident-level
componentswere cross-tabulated with pattern of tactics (i.e.,
singular, multi-ple, chained, series, or multiseparate) to answer
these questions.
Next, we considered the research question about the extent
ofdifference between the woman’s accounts and tactics-based
cat-egories. The components at both the incident and case
levelswere sorted by the categories of reassault (i.e.,
non-reassault,one-time reassault, and repeat reassault). This was
done withcross-tabulations for each component and reassault
category,inspecting for tendencies across the responses. As an
arbitraryguide, we noted items that varied 10% or more across the
re-assault category or pattern of tactics. Significance levels
weretechnically not appropriate in this instance given the
qualitativebasis of the data and the absence of true random
sampling(Cohen, 1994). The main purpose of the tabulations and
cross-tabulations was to more systematically sort the descriptive
dataand substantiate the overall impressions from reviewing
theaccounts.
RESULTS
DISTINGUISHING COMPONENTS
The patterns of tactics used in the incidents were primarily
sin-gular (33% of the incidents), multiple (30%), and chained
(26%).The remaining incidents were classified as series
(6%),multiseparate (1%), or with no reported tactics or no certain
classi-fication (4%). We therefore focused on the three primary
patternsin an effort to identify distinguishing components among
the inci-dents. Overall, the pattern of tactics did not appear to
be substan-tially distinguished by the other components of the
physicallyabusive incidents. The chained incidents, however, were
slightlymore likely to involve what might be considered
exacerbatingcomponents, such as not living together, alcohol use as
an issue,woman’s assertiveness as a precipitant, man’s drunkenness
as theemotional state, escalating dynamics, woman not calling for
help,and man leaving after the incident.
As indicated in Table 1, incidents characterized by chained
tac-tics, as opposed to singular or multiple, were more likely to
havepartners not living together (30% chained versus 23%
multiple
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Gondolf, Beeman / WOMEN’S ACCOUNTS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 289
TABLE 1Incident Components by Tactic Pattern (536 Incidents)
Tactic Pattern (%)
Incident Component Chained Multiple Singular Total (%)
Relationship statusLiving together 39 33 38 38Not living
together 30 23 20 25Woman left/leaving 1 2 0 1No contact 0 1 1
0
Background topic/issueMoney/finances 2 1 5 2Child treatment or
access 4 4 6 5Sexual relationship 2 2 3 2Alcohol or drugs 35 28 20
26Woman’s assertiveness 17 11 13 14Woman’s help seeking 1 1 1
1Separation, leaving, or divorce 6 6 3 5Woman’s affair 6 4 5 5Man’s
affair 2 3 4 4
CircumstancesPlace 35 41 44 39Others present 17 16 14 16Others
assaulted 3 1 2 2Items thrown 11 5 5 7Property damaged 10 4 3
6Arguing escalated 16 26 23 21Preceding threats 3 2 2 3Break-in or
stalked 4 2 1 3
Incident precipitant/causeMoney/finances 2 0 1 1Child treatment
or access 1 0 2 1Sexual relationship 0 1 1 1Alcohol or drugs 14 11
13 13Woman’s assertiveness 59 47 45 49Woman’s help seeking 0 0 1
0Separation, leaving, or divorce 1 0 1 1Woman’s affair 4 4 5 5Man’s
affair 0 1 0 0
Substance abuseMan used alcohol 18 14 16 15Man intoxicated/drunk
17 13 9 13Man on drugs or high 3 4 1 3Woman used alcohol 8 6 6
7Woman on drugs or high 1 1 0 1
Man’s emotional stateScreaming/yelling 6 7 6 7Rage/flipped out 6
5 5 6Mad/upset 27 34 40 32Hostile/mean 14 13 6 11
(continued)
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and 20% singular) and include alcohol and drugs as a
backgroundissue (35% versus 28% and 20%) but were slightly less
likely toinvolve escalating arguments (16% versus 26% and 23%).
Therewas little difference in others being present (range of 14% to
17%)or in preceding threats (2% to 3%). The precipitant was
morelikely to be the woman’s assertiveness in the incidents of
chainedtactics (59% versus 47% and 45%). That is, the woman
questioned,resisted, or refused the man’s coercive or controlling
demands orbehavior. There was little variation in alcohol and drugs
as a pre-cipitant across the pattern of tactics (11% to 14%) and
the manusing alcohol at the time of the incident (14% to 18%).
However,the man was slightly more likely to be reported as drunk in
theincidents of chained tactics (17% versus 13% and 9%).
The men also tended to be characterized more often as hostileor
mean in incidents of chained (14%) and multiple (13%) tacticsthan
in incidents of singular tactics (6%) and less often as mad orupset
in chained tactics (27%) than in multiple (34%) or singular
290 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / March 2003
TABLE 1 (continued)
Tactic Pattern (%)
Incident Component Chained Multiple Singular Total (%)
Deliberate/cold 4 4 2 4Sad/depressed/crying 0 1 0
1Disoriented/confused 0 0 0 0Jealous/possessive 9 9 11
10Controlling/coercive 23 20 20 21Blaming/condemning 2 2 2 2
Dynamics of eventMan first assaulter 27 64 60 50Woman first
assaulter 4 4 5 5Man and woman assault 7 3 2
4Assaults/reacts/escalates 57 10 6 23Assaults/reacts/ends 4 19 25
16
Woman’s ending responseCapitulation/gives in 9 4 1
5Aggression/counter 16 12 11 12Gets him to leave 4 1 2 2She
leaves/escapes 18 18 16 18Calls for help 23 22 38 28
Man’s action after incidentApology 4 5 1 3Threats 3 8 2 4Left 27
20 13 19
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(40%) tactics. Coercion and control were similarly evident
acrossthe patterns of tactics (20% to 23%). Emotional states
described asrage, deliberate, depressed, confused, jealous, or
blaming werenot frequently identified (0% to 10% of the incidents)
and did notsubstantially vary across the pattern categories.
The dynamics of incidents distinguished the patterns of
tacticsthe most. The chained tactics were nearly 6 times as likely
as themultiple tactics to be associated with the dynamic of an
assault bythe man, reaction from the woman, and escalation by the
man(57% chained versus 10% multiple and 6% singular). They werealso
half as likely as the incidents of multiple or singular tactics
tobe the result of the man initiating the physical abuse with no
iden-tified reaction from the woman (27% versus 64% and 60%).Women
were reportedly the first to assault in only 5% of the inci-dents.
The women were less likely to call for help after chainedand
multiple tactics (23% chained and 22% multiple versus 38%singular),
and the men were more likely to leave after the chainedtactics (27%
versus 20% and 13%). The rated severity of the inci-dents did not
substantially vary across the pattern of tactics (19%to 26% for a
severity rating of greater than 5).
INCIDENTS AND REASSAULT CATEGORIES
The incident accounts did not substantially distinguish
thereassault categories. In other words, the men in the
repeatreassault category were not more likely to account for the
mostsevere physical abuse against their partners. As indicated
inTable 2, they were slightly less likely to not be living with
theirpartner, more likely to be hostile or mean, and less likely to
have apartner who called for help. These tendencies are relatively
weak,and many other components show no substantial
differencesacross the reassault categories.
There was little variation in alcohol use (13% to 18%)
andwomen’s assertiveness as an issue (12% to 16%). The
woman’sassertiveness (45% to 52%) and escalating argument (18% to
22%)were not distinguishing precipitants, either. The
repeatreassaulters were slightly more likely to be hostile (14%
repeatversus 11% one time and 5% no reassault) but were not
substan-tially different in terms of being drunk (15% repeat versus
14%
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one time and 10% no reassault), angry (30% to 39%), jealous (7%
to11%), or coercive (20% to 22%).
Escalating dynamics (22% to 24%) and chained tactics (26% to27%)
were not more strongly associated with repeat reassaulters,as
expected. There was a tendency toward more severe ratings
forincidents committed by the repeat reassaulters, but this
tendencywas weak (24% repeat versus 21% one time and 16% no
reassault,for severity ratings greater than 5). The only notable
differencewas that women were approximately half as likely to call
thepolice in response to incidents committed by the
repeatreassaulters (22% versus 24% and 41%). The repeat
reassaulters,however, were no more likely to leave after the event
(18% to 21%).
292 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / March 2003
TABLE 2Incident Components by Reassault Category (536
Incidents)
Reassault Category (%)
Incident Component Repeat Once None Total (%)
Relationship statusLiving together 34 35 42 52Not living
together 14 22 34 34Woman left/leaving 1 1 1 2
Man’s emotional stateScreaming/yelling 7 6 7 7Rage/flipped out 6
6 5 5Mad/upset 31 30 39 32Hostile/mean 14 11 5 11Deliberate/cold 4
4 3 4Sad/depressed/crying 1 0 0 1Disoriented/confused 0 0 0
0Jealous/possessive 10 11 7 10Controlling/coercive 20 21 22
21Blaming/condemning 2 3 1 2
Substance abuseMan used alcohol 13 15 18 15Man intoxicated/drunk
15 14 10 13Man on drugs or high 3 3 2 3Woman used alcohol 3 9 10
7Woman on drugs or high 1 0 1 1
Woman’s ending responseCapitulation/gives in 8 4 0
4Aggression/counter 13 14 9 12Gets him to leave 3 1 2 2She
leaves/escapes 19 17 16 18Calls for help 22 24 41 28
Severity rating (> 5) 24 21 16 20
NOTE: To save space, not all the incident components of Table 1
are included in Table 2.
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CASE SUMMARIES AND REASSAULT CATEGORIES
The case summaries of women’s issues, batterer problems, andthe
nature of the physical abuse revealed more pronounced differ-ences
among the reassault categories. The unassertiveness of thefemale
partners was the most distinguishing component for part-ners of
repeat reassaulters. The men in the repeat reassault cate-gory also
appeared more domineering and terrorizing. The inci-dents of the
repeat reassaulters tended to be more severe than thepreceding
incidents of the non-reassaulters and to be consistent orescalating
in severity rather than decreasing, but these differencesare not as
substantial as we expected.
As indicated in Table 3, the female partners of the
repeatreassaulters were less likely than non-reassaulters to be
rated lowon the more passive responses of resigned or submissive
(56%repeat versus 74% one time and 94% no reassault) and
protectiveof the man (70% versus 69% and 87%); that is, they were
morelikely to be rated as medium or high on these passive
responses.These women were also more likely to be rated low on the
moreassertive responses of trying to stop or control the violence
herself(21% versus 10% and 9%) and seeking help and support (33%
ver-sus 20% and 22%). These ratings translate into the partners of
therepeat reassaulters being less assertive overall. The men
classifiedas repeat reassaulters, on the other hand, were more
possessive orcontrolling (57% repeat versus 42% one time and 26%
noreassault, for high rating) and used more alcohol and drugs
(39%versus 31% and 17%, for high rating). The repeat
reassaulterswere similar to the one-time reassaulters in terms of
high ratingsfor anger or temper (46% and 42% versus 18%),
manipulation ordeception (24% and 33% versus 10%), and consistently
abusive(36% and 32% versus 15%): Both repeat and one-time
reassaultershad greater portions rated high on these problems than
the non-reassaulters.
Table 4 shows that type of violence was less distinct across
thereassault categories. Asmaller portion of repeat reassaulters
wereclassified as committing less severe violence, but a similar
portionwere classified as severe and stopped, severe and unstopped,
andexcessive in their violence (34% repeat, 33% one time, and 32%
noreassault). There is a slight tendency toward the repeat
re-assaulters being excessively violent (9% versus 4% and 2%),
butthe tendency is insubstantial, especially given the number of
cases
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rated excessive (n = 12). The violence of the repeat
reassaulters,however, was more likely to be consistent or
escalating than thatof the one-time reassaulters (49% versus 21%).
The one-time
294 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / March 2003
TABLE 3Woman’s and Man’s Issues by Reassault Category (299
Cases)
Reassault Category (%)
Incident Summary Repeat Once None Total (%)
Woman’s issuesResigned/submissiveness
Low 56 74 94 79Medium 10 4 6 6High 9 1 0 2
Protective of manLow 70 69 87 78Medium 21 18 10 15High 6 5 1
3
Trying to stop or control violenceLow 21 10 9 12Medium 23 29 51
38High 51 51 34 43
Seeking help and supportLow 33 20 22 24Medium 26 27 46 36High 36
39 27 32
Man’s issuesPossessiveness/control
Low 7 20 35 24Medium 19 31 23 24High 57 42 26 38
Manipulative/deceptiveLow 41 43 77 59Medium 27 23 11 18High 24
33 10 20
Anger/temperLow 6 6 9 7Medium 33 23 22 25High 46 42 18
31Decrease 3 21 41 26
Consistently abusiveLow 29 17 54 38Medium 27 19 12 18High 36 32
15 25
Alcohol/drug abuseLow 40 49 50 47Medium 11 12 6 9High 39 31 17
26
NOTE: Ratings of decreased, increased, and mixed were deleted
from the table when thesecategories accounted for less than 10% of
the cases.
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reassaulters were more likely to show cyclical decreasing
patternsof violence.
Independent from the above analysis, the research assistantshad
the impression that reassault categories did not
substantiallydiffer in terms of abusive tactics or behaviors.
However, they didobserve that those who were excessively violent,
regardless ofreassault category, were more controlling and
possessive thanthose who exhibited less severe violence. These
impressionsreflect the findings of incident-level coding and
confirm that dif-ferences in severity across the reassault
categories are not thatpronounced. It does raise the possibility of
a small subgroup ofexcessively violent men being somewhat
distinct.
These excessively violent men obviously warrant special
atten-tion and further study. As suggested in the example below,
thereappears to be a level of persistence and threat that makes
thesemen especially dangerous.
Mike came bursting through the front door saying he was going
tokill me this time for sure. I had no idea what he was talking
about orwhere he had been. He may have been out drinking or
something.He went to grab me, and I stepped back. He reached for a
lamp onthe table next to him and threw it at me as I ran for the
door. I madeit to the car and locked myself in there. He followed
me. When hecouldn’t get in the car, he smashed the windshield with
a shovelhandle. I got out the other side of the car and ran as fast
as I could tothe neighbors’ house. I screamed that he was coming
after me. Theneighbors put me in a closet and called the police. I
could hear
Gondolf, Beeman / WOMEN’S ACCOUNTS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 295
TABLE 4Violence Type and Incident Pattern by Reassault Category
(299 Cases)
Reassault Category (%)
Incident Component Repeat Once None Total (%)
Violence typeExcessive 9 4 2 4Severe and unstopped 16 11 18
15Severe and stopped 9 18 12 13Less severe 37 42 63 51Mixed 30 26 0
14
Incident patternConsistent 39 20 NA 29Decreasing 17 29 NA
23Cycle 31 42 NA 37Escalating 10 1 NA 5
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Mike pounding on their front door and breaking in. He
wentthrough the house to find me, but the police arrived and
draggedhim off. I was sure that this time it was going to be the
end of me.
DISCUSSION
SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS
Our exploration for revised or additional outcome
categoriesexposes the limitations of more conventional
tactics-based out-come categories. The women’s accounts of violent
incidents didnot neatly match the tactics-based categories, but the
summary ofincidents over time revealed a few tendencies worth
noting. Thelatter may suggest some utility in considering the
accumulationof abuse and violence rather than separate incidents to
character-ize outcomes.
In our search for distinct kinds of incidents among the
women’saccounts, we did find that the pattern of tactics
correspondedsomewhat to exacerbating circumstances. Some
incidentsappeared to follow a situational process that escalated in
responseto circumstances, but most incidents appeared idiosyncratic
as aresult of the complexity of circumstances. However, the
incidentcomponents did not directly correspond to our tactics-based
cate-gories. The more severe patterns and dynamics of physically
abu-sive incidents were not more likely to correspond to the
repeatreassault category. Moreover, batterer characteristics were
notsubstantially associated with the reassault categories or the
inci-dent components, as we have found in our previous studies
withthis database (Gondolf & White, 2001; Heckert &
Gondolf, 2001;Jones & Gondolf, 2001).
Summarizing the incidents over the course of time revealedsome
tendencies in the expected direction. For instance, the
repeatreassault category tended to include more men who were
identi-fied as possessive and controlling and who were consistent
intheir violent tactics or in escalating them. However, these men
didnot stand out to research assistants in their impressionistic
casereview and may not be clinically significant. There does appear
tobe a small subgroup of incidents with unrelenting, excessive
vio-lence; escalation of violence; and more possessive and
controllingbehavior that might warrant a subcategory of its own.
These
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incidents were notable to the research assistants for their
extentand severity.
The one notable correspondence between our characterizationof
the women’s accounts and the tactics-based outcomes is thatfemale
partners of men who repeatedly reassaulted appear to beless
assertive as a group than those of men who did not reassault.The
women with repeat reassaulters may be more fearful of retali-ation
from consistently abusive and controlling men, as Jacobsonand
Gottman (1998) suggested in their laboratory study. Thesewomen may
also be discouraged by the failures of their previoushelp-seeking
efforts and feel their efforts to stop the violence arenot
worthwhile. As a result, the repeat reassaulters continue
theirviolence unchecked. The first speculation implies that repeat
vio-lence is more the result of the batterer’s punishing tactics,
and thesecond suggests more the role of circumstance: He is able to
getaway with it.
In any case, women’s assertiveness appears to warrant
moreconsideration in the effort to distinguish, predict, and
containsevere violence. It may show that the tactics-based outcome
cate-gories correspond, at least somewhat, to women’s
experience.Some researchers have argued that women’s perceptions of
andresponses to violence are fundamental to understanding domes-tic
violence and need to be more extensively investigated(M. Dutton,
1999; Smith et al., 1999). Abroader examination of therelationship
dynamics in general, rather than focusing only onincidents, might
further distinguish the reassault outcome cate-gories. The women’s
assertiveness may reflect the dynamics ofthe relationship in
general. The broader context of nonphysicalabuse and daily control
or subjection may so entrap or debilitatesome women that they are
unable to assert themselves.
Our findings also raise some implications for
practitioners,especially regarding assessment. They reinforce the
urging frommany battered women’s advocates for more extensive and
thor-ough accounts from battered women. They suggest the
impor-tance of developing the rapport and support that enables
awoman to tell the details of her story while
avoidingretraumatization. Afuller account of violence, as opposed
to morebasic inventories and categories, is likely to reveal a
different pic-ture of severity and danger. This information is
important inestablishing a woman’s safety and containing a man’s
violence
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because the extent and nature of previous violence is such a
strongpredictor of recurrent violence (Hanson &
Wallace-Capretta,2000).
Practitioners also need to increase the identification
andresponse to the men committing unrelenting and excessive
vio-lence. So far, it appears difficult to distinguish these men
usingdemographics or behavioral indicators at intake, but the
exam-ples in our data call for more decisive protection of the
womenand containment of the men when such violence does occur.
Moreoutreach and support with the partners of such men is
especiallyneeded to heighten the intervention, given the tendency
for thesewomen to not seek further help. Unfortunately, we found
only asmall portion of the female partners of the men in our study
hadany contact with victim services after the first few months of
thebatterer program (Gondolf, 2002).
QUALIFICATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
One criticism this study may face concerns the validity of
thewomen’s accounts of physically abusive incidents. The
accountsare obviously the women’s recollections and interpretations
ofwhat happened and, therefore, could be affected by
self-reportbias. Moreover, our coding of incidents could be
influenced byvariation in the extent of women’s disclosure. The
absence ofsome components may simply mean the failure to mention
them.In addition, some men may have been mistakenly categorized
asone-time reassaulters or non-reassaulters because women did
notfeel comfortable disclosing a reassault. Despite coding rules
andinterrater reliability, the coding of women’s accounts was
basi-cally a subjective process with occasional difficulty in
determin-ing the appropriate codes.
We did use procedures to limit these possibilities, such as
peri-odic follow-up interviews, a “funnel” system of questioning,
andvalidation of women’s reports of a reassault with police
recordsand men’s reports (Gondolf, 2000; Gondolf, Chang, &
Laporte,1999). Future research might incorporate more systematic
meth-ods of investigating the components of physically abusive
inci-dents. Although there are some advantages to letting a
womantell her story, an inventory of components would help to
producemore consistent and extensive detail. The details might
be
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corroborated or expanded with the men’s accounts and those ofany
other observers. However, this sort of validation needs to bedone
with caution because it may make a supportive study seemmore like
an interrogation.
CONCLUSION
This study produces only faint support for the
tactics-basedoutcome categories commonly used in prediction
research andsome further considerations for the development of
outcome cat-egories. The slight association between women’s
assertivenessand the tactics-based categories may be pointing to
the impor-tance of women’s perceptions and responses in
characterizingdomestic violence. Another consideration is the
possibility of asmall subcategory of excessive and unrelenting
violence thatappears to be severely harmful and frightening. Such a
subcate-gory is obviously of the greatest concern for prediction
researchand not currently captured by conventional
tactics-basedcategories.
In sum, our findings overall substantiate the claims of
manydomestic violence researchers that tactics-based outcome
catego-ries may not sufficiently represent recurring abuse and
reassault.If prediction research so crucial to intervention is to
advance,more complex outcomes need to be identified.
NOTES
1. Predicting the recurring abuse and reassault of a clinical
sample is a different andsomewhat more difficult task than
predicting or identifying risk markers for domestic vio-lence in
the general population or among community samples. That the
clinical sample ismore homogenous and typically has a history of
recent violence makes future violencemore difficult to predict.
2. The proportion of men in each classification does not
correspond directly to the out-comes of all the respondents
reported in previous analyses (Gondolf, 1997b; Gondolf &White,
2001) because a portion of the repeatedly reassaulted women left
their partners anddid not respond for the full 15-month follow-up
period. Also, 14 of the men classified asone-time reassaulters
reassaulted their partners more than once during a 3-month
intervaland primarily in successive incidents. Other sample
characteristics are summarized in aprevious report on the
personality profiles of the reassaulters category (Gondolf &
White,2001).
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Edward W. Gondolf, Ed.D., MPH, is associate director of research
at the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Training Institute and professor of
sociology at Indiana Uni-versity of Pennsylvania. He has authored
numerous articles and several books ondomestic violence. His most
recent books are Assessing Women Battering inMental Health Services
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Angie K. Beeman, M.A., was a graduate research assistant at the
Mid-AtlanticAddiction Training Institute for 2 years and is
currently a doctoral candidate insociology at the University of
Connecticut. Her master’s thesis examined thenature of interracial
relationships in films, and she continues to study
socialinequality, critical race studies, and Asian
acculturation.
Gondolf, Beeman / WOMEN’S ACCOUNTS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 301
at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on October 13,
2014vaw.sagepub.comDownloaded from
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