Conflict tactics scale

The conflict tactics scale (CTS), created by Murray A. Straus in 1979,^[1] is the most widely used research method for identifying intimate partner violence. There are two versions of the CTS, the CTS2 and CTSPC.^[2][3][4] As of 2005,^[5] the CTS has been used in about 600 peer reviewed scientific or scholarly papers, including longitudinal birth-cohort studies.^[6] The CTS is one of the most widely criticized measures for its exclusion of context variables, severity, and motivational factors in understanding acts of violence.^[7][8] The National Institute of Justice, for example, cautions that the CTS may not be appropriate for intimate partner violence (IPV) research because it does not measure many aspects of IPV.^[9]

Notable usage

In the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Langhinrichsen-Rohling states that the "CTS was revolutionary because it allowed researchers to quantitatively study events that had often been ignored culturally and typically took place in private." ^[10] The CTS has been used in national surveys on the prevalence of family violence in the USA and other countries. National surveys conducted in the USA include two National Family Violence Surveys,^[11] the National Violence Against Women Survey, and the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being.^[12]

Structure

The scales are based on the premise that conflict is an inevitable aspect of all human association, but that the use of coercion (including force and violence) as a conflict-resolution tactic is harmful. The CTS focuses on "conflict tactics" – the method used to advance one's own interest within a conflict – as a behavior and measures the conflict tactic behaviors of both the respondent and their partner/primary caregiver. However, the CTS "deliberately excludes attitudes, emotions, and cognitive appraisal of the behaviors" measured so that relationships between behaviors measured by the CTS and attitudes, emotions, and cognitive appraisals of these behaviors can be clearly analyzed.^[13] A CTS-based study would ideally include data from respondents and their partners/primary caregivers in order to investigate the degree of symmetry or asymmetry between their responses. The CTS can be administered through an in-person interview, telephone interview, self-administered questionnaire, and computer-administered questionnaire.

Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2)

As of 2000,^[14] the CTS2 measured a total of 39 behaviors. Each of these behaviors, or "items," are divided into five categories: "Physical Assault," "Injury," "Psychological Aggression," "Sexual Coercion," and "Negotiation." There are 6 items in "Negotiation," 8 items in "Psychological Aggression," 12 items in "Physical Assault," 7 items in "Sexual Coercion," and 6 items in "Injury." Straus gives examples of a minor and severe questions within each scale:^[15]

• Physical Assault: "I slapped my partner." "I punched or hit my partner with something that could hurt."
• Injury: "I had a sprain, bruise, or small cut because of a fight with my partner." "I needed to see a doctor because of a fight with my partner, but I didn't."
• Psychological Aggression: "I shouted or yelled at my partner." "I stomped out of the room or house or yard during a disagreement."
• Sexual Coercion: "I insisted on sex when my partner did not want to (but did not use physical force)." "I used force (like hitting, holding down, or using a weapon) to make my partner have sex."
• Negotiation: "I said I cared about my partner even though we disagreed." "I suggested a compromise to a disagreement."

CTS2 questions are presented in pairs. The first question in the pair asks respondents to indicate how often they carried out each item, in a range from "never" to "more than 20 times," in the referent period. The second asks how often the partner carried out each item within the same referent period. Default referent periods are usually 12 months, but other spans of time can be used.^[15] Subscales measuring the degree of severity of "less severe" and "more severe" behaviors are included for all CTS scales, "based on the presumed greater harm resulting from acts in the severe subscale." ^[16] The severity of behaviors can also be measured by analyzing the frequency of the acts and by whether an injury was reported by the respondent.

Child-Parent CTS

The CTSPC (parent-child relationships) has scales to measure:

• physical assault (with subscales for corporal punishment and physical abuse),
• psychological aggression,
• and non-violent discipline techniques.

The CTSPC also includes supplementary questions on instances of neglect, sexual abuse, and discipline in the past week.^[17]

Scoring

There are many ways to score the CTS. Core publications on the CTS and a paper on scoring the CTS provide a complete range of information on CTS scoring practices.^{[18][19][20][21][22]}

Common scoring methods

• Prevalence

Results in the percentage of respondents who reported being a victim of or perpetrating an item (or items) listed in the "Physical Assault," "Injury," and/or "Sexual Coercion" scales one or more times.^[23]

• Frequency

Results percentages of the number of times an item occurred in the past year. A limitation of this score is that, for general population samples, the distribution is so skewed that the mean is not an appropriate measure of central tendency. However, a sample of known offenders or victims will have a much higher frequency score that can be very useful for measuring the chronicity of maltreatment.^[23]

• Severity level and mutuality types

The severity level reports classifies each case into three categories: none, minor only, or severe. The mutuality types classify each case as respondent only, partner only, or both. The mutuality types may be particularly useful in couples therapy because over a hundred studies have found that when there is violence, 50 percent or more of the time it is by both partners.^[23][24][25]

Criticism

Critics of the CTS ^[26] argue that the scales do not provide information about the context in which items occur (including the initiation, intention, history, or pattern of violence) and therefore may misrepresent the characteristics of violence between partners. Another major criticism is that the CTS does not include sexual assault in its definition of family conflict, thus excluding a prominent form of spousal abuse.^[27] The CTS also does not measure economic abuse, manipulation involving children, isolation, or intimidation – all common measures of violence from a victim-advocacy perspective.^[28] Moreover, response bias may occur and CTS does not factor in the cases of nonrespondents. These elements are typically difficult to measure but nevertheless important to understanding violence.

Addressing criticism of the CTS, Straus says that:

"[T]he most frequent criticisms reflect ideological differences rather than empirical evidence. Specifically, many feminist scholars reject the CTS because studies using this instrument find that about the same percentage of women as men assault their partners. This contradicts the feminist theory that partner violence is almost exclusively committed by men as a means to dominate women, and is therefore prima facie evidence that the CTS is not valid. Ironically, the fact that the CTS has provided some of the best evidence confirming the link between male dominance and partner violence and other key aspects of feminist theory of partner violence has not shaken the belief that the CTS is invalid."^[29][30][31]

In his article in Nicky Ali Jackson's Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence, Straus addresses three "erroneous" criticisms of the CTS:^[32]

• Measures Only Conflict-Related Violence

"Although the theoretical basis of the CTS is conflict theory, the introductory explanation to participants specifically includes expressive and malicious violence. It asks respondents to answer questions about the times when they and their partners 'disagree, get annoyed with the other person, want different things from each other, or just have spats or fights because they are in a bad mood, are tired or for some other reason.' ... [N]o empirical evidence has been provided showing that only conflict-related violence is supported. In fact, where there are both CTS data and qualitative data, as in Giles-Sims (1983),^[33] it shows that the CTS elicits malicious violence as well as conflict-related violence."^[29]

• Equates Acts That Differ Greatly in Seriousness

"The physical assault scale, like all the CTS maltreatment scales, differentiates between less severe acts of violence, such as slapping and throwing things at a partner, and more severe acts such as punching, kicking, and choking, and the CTS provides the opportunity to weight the scores by the frequency of these behaviors."^[34]

• Context and Consequences are Ignored

"Context and consequences are extremely important, but they must be measured separately from the behavior they presumably cause to be able to test theories about context effects. This includes information on whether the assault was in self-defense or retaliation or was provoked by domineering behavior, verbal taunting, or other psychological aggression. For example, because the CTS has a separate measure of psychological aggression, Murphy and O'Leary (1989) were able to test the theory that psychological aggression against a partner is associated with an increased probability of physical violence." ^[34][35][36]

Later in this article, Straus outlines self-described "actual-limitations" of the CTS:^[34]

• Covers Only a Limited Set of Violent Acts

The subscales are limited to distinguishing only minor and severe levels of each of the tactics.^[34]

• Response Categories are Unrealistic

Respondents cannot be expected to accurately report the total number of times an event that occurred daily (or several times a day or week) occurred in the referent period of a year. "Nevertheless, thousands of respondents around the world have provided these estimates, and these data have been successfully used to identify cases which are low or high compared with other respondents. These response categories enabled Giles-Sims (1983) to estimate that women in the shelter she studied had been assaulted an average time of sixty-nine times in the preceding year. This is more than ten times greater than the six times in the previous twelve months experienced by women in the National Family Violence Survey who had been assaulted that year (Straus and Gelles 1990)." ^[34][37][38]

• Underreporting

Though the CTS usually reports higher rates of partner violence than other instruments, it is still subject to the willingness of respondents to report their victimization and perpetration of behaviors truthfully. "In addition, a meta-analysis (Archer 1999) found that although both men and women underreport, the extent of underreporting is greater for men. Perhaps the most serious type of underreporting is by partners or victims of partners who engage in repeated severe assaults that often produce injuries." ^[34][39] Straus also notes that underreporting "is a limitation of survey research on partner violence rather than a unique problem of the CTS."^[34]

• Obtains Maltreatment Data for Only the Current (Or Most Recent) Partner or Caregiver

The CTS does not provide information concerning respondents' histories of victimization or perpetration.^[34]

• Injuries Not Directly Linked to Assualts

"The injury scale does not provide information on which assault caused each of the injuries in the scale. Research to understand the processes resulting in injury could obtain this information by expanding the CTS to ask each of the injury items for each assaultive behavior reported." ^[34]

Other methodological issues with the CTS include that interobserver reliability (the likelihood that the two members of the measured dyad respond similarly) is near zero for tested husband and wife couples. That is, the chances of a given couple reporting similar answers about events they both experienced is no greater than chance.^[40] On the most severe CTS items, husband-wife agreement is actually below chance:

On the item "beat up," concordance was nil: although there were respondents of both sexes who claimed to have administered beatings and respondents of both sexes who claimed to have been on the receiving end, there was not a single couple in which one party claimed to have administered and the other to have received such a beating.^[40]

See also

• Child abuse
• Domestic violence
• Spousal abuse
• Feminism and Women's rights
• Masculism and Men's rights

References

1. ^ Straus, Murray A. (1979). "Measuring intra family conflict and violence: The Conflict Tactics Scale". Journal of Marriage and the Family, 41, pp. 75–88.
2. ^ Straus, Murray A., Sherry L. Hamby, Susan Boney-McCoy, and David B. Sugarman. "The Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2): Development and Preliminary Psychometric Data." Journal of Family Issues 17.3 (1996): 283–316.
3. ^ Straus, Murray A., Sherry L. Hamby, David Finkelhor, David W. Moore, and Desmond Runyan. "Identification of Child Maltreatment with the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales: Development and Psychometric Data for a National Sample of American Parents." Child Abuse and Neglect 22 (1998): 249–270.
4. ^ Straus, Murray A., and Sherry L. Hamby. "Measuring Physical and Psychological Maltreatment of Children with the conflict Tactics Scales." In Out of the Darkness: contemporary Research Perspectives on Family Violence, edited by G. Kaufman Kantor and J. Jasinski. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 1997.
5. ^ Straus, Murray A. "Conflict Tactics Scales," in Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence. Ed. Nicky Ali Jackson. New York, London: Routledge, 2007. 195.
6. ^ Findings About Partner Violence From the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, Research in Brief NCJ 170018, July 1999, Research in Brief, by Terrie E. Moffitt, Avshalom E. Caspi [1]
7. ^ Dobash, Russel P.; Dobash, R. Emerson (2004). "Women's Violence to Men in Intimate Relationships". The British Journal of Criminology 44 (3): 324–349. doi: 10.1093/bjc/azh026.
8. ^ Colarossi, Linda (2005). "A Response to Danis & Lockhart: What Guides Social Work Knowledge About Violence Against Women?" Journal of Social Work Education 41 (1): 147–159.
9. ^ "Measuring Intimate Partner (Domestic) Violence". National Institute of Justice (May 12, 2010), accessed October 18, 2011.
10. ^ Langhinrichsen-Rohling, J. (2005). Top 10 greatest "hits" important findings and future directions for intimate partner violence research. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20(1), 108–118.
11. ^ Straus, Murray A., and Richard J. Gelles. Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications, 1990.
12. ^ Straus, 2007: 195.
13. ^ Straus, 2007: 190–1.
14. ^ Acierno, Ron."Screening Measures for Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Physical Assault." National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center. Medical University of South Carolina, 2000.
15. ^ ^{a b} Straus, 2007: 191.
16. ^ Straus, 2007: 191
17. ^ Straus, 2007: 190
18. ^ Sraus, 2007:195
19. ^ Straus, Murray A.. "Homepage for Murray A. Straus". http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/. Retrieved 9 May 2011. 
20. ^ Straus et al. 1996
21. ^ Straus et al. 1998
22. ^ Straus, Murray A., and Emily M. Douglas. "A Short Form of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales, and Typologies for Severity and Mutuality." Violence and Victims 19.5 (2004): 507–520.
23. ^ ^{a b c} Straus, 2007: 195
24. ^ Archer, John. "Sex Differences in Aggression between Heterosexual Partners: A Meta-Analytic Review." Psychological Bulletin 126.5 (200): 651–680.
25. ^ Straus, Murray A., and Ignacio Luis Ramirez. "Gender Symmetry in Prevalence, Severity, and Chronicity of Physical Aggression against Dating Partners by University Students in Mexico and USA." Aggressive Behavior 33.4 (2007): 281–290.
26. ^ Michael Flood, Claims about Husband Battering at XYonline
27. ^ Kimmel, Michael S. (2002). "'Gender symmetry' in domestic violence: A substantive and methodological research review". Violence Against Women 8 (11). http://new.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/GenderSymmetry.pdf. 
28. ^ [2].
29. ^ ^{a b} Straus, 2007: 193
30. ^ Coleman, Diane H., and Murray A. Straus. "Marital Power, Conflict, and Violence in a Nationally Representative Sample of American Couples." In Physical Violence in American Families, edited by M.A. Straus and R.J. Gelles. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications, 1990.
31. ^ Straus, Murray A., Sherry L. Hamby, and W. Louise Warren. "State-to-State Differences in Social Inequality and Social Bonds in Relation to Assaults on Wives in the United States." Journal of Comparative Family Studies 25.1 (1994):7–24.
32. ^ Straus, 2007: 193–4
33. ^ Giles-Sims, Jean. Wife Battering: A Systems Theory Approach. New York: Guilford Press, 1983.
34. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Straus, 2007: 194
35. ^ Murphy, Christopher M., and K. Daniel O'Leary. "Psychological Aggression Predicts Physical Aggression in Early Marriage." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 57.5 (1989):579–582.
36. ^ [3]
37. ^ Giles-Sims, 1983
38. ^ Straus and Gelles, 1990
39. ^ Archer, John. "Assessment of the Reliability of the Conflict Tactics Scales: A Meta-Analytic Review." Journal of Interpersonal Violence 14.12 (1999): 1263–1289.
40. ^ ^{a b} Dobash RP, Dobash RE, Wilson M, Daly M, 1992. "The myth of sexual symmetry in marital violence." Social Problems 39: 71–91.

External links

• The Conflict Tactics Scales CTS44
• Murray A. Straus