Faculty Bibliography

This paper describes two studies investigating the interrater agreement of severity scales for family maltreatment used in America's largest child and family maltreatment agency: the U. S. military's Family Advocacy Program (FAP). The USAF-FAP Severity Index is a multidimensional rating system for clinicians' evaluations of the severity of seven forms of family maltreatment: partner physical, emotional, and sexual abuse; child physical, emotional, and sexual abuse; and child neglect. The first study evaluated the reliability of the scale as it is used in the field. The second study compared a generalizable sample of clinicians' ratings to an established "gold standard" of what the ratings should have been. The Severity Index demonstrated fair-to-good levels of reliability, suggesting that with minimal cost, investigating caseworkers can routinely assess, and make fairly reliable ratings of, the severity of seven forms of family maltreatment for each case they investigate.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of an empirically tested program for physical aggression: Physical Aggression Couples Treatment (PACT). Although we do not advocate standard "marital therapy" when there is ongoing husband-to-wife interspousal aggression, we present the rationale for, description of, and empirical support for a conjoint treatment approach to wife abuse abatement. © 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

The cycle of violence posits that victimized children grow up to victimize others. Three forms of the cycle have never been tested: whether exposure to physical victimization and interparental violence additively or interactively increase risk for adulthood (a) child abuse perpetration; (b) partner abuse perpetration; or (c) partner abuse victimization. These hypotheses were tested in a nationally representative data set (1985 National Family Violence Survey) comprising 6,002 participants. Dually exposed, compared to singly exposed, women had significantly increased risk for adulthood family violence. Frequency of family-of-origin violence predicted adulthood child and partner abuse through both main and interactive effects.

Relationship adjustment (e.g., Dyadic Adjustment Scale; DAS) and physical aggression (e.g., Conflict Tactics Scale) measures are used both as screening tools and as the sole criterion for classification. This study created face valid diagnostic interviews for relationship distress and physical abuse, through which one could compare preliminarily the classification properties of questionnaire reports. The DAS (and a global measure of relationship satisfaction) had modest agreement with a structured diagnostic interview; both questionnaires tended to overdiagnose distress compared with the interview. Results for partner abuse reiterated the need to go beyond occurrence of aggression as the sole diagnostic criterion, because men's aggression was more likely than women's to rise to the level of "abuse" when diagnostic criteria (injury or substantial fear) were applied.

A system for categorizing partner-violent men as either reactive or proactive aggressors was developed and evaluated in the present study. Sixty partner-violent men were reliably categorized, and the distribution (62% reactive, 38% proactive) fell within the expected range. Some construct validity was demonstrated, as several significant predicted group differences were found on factors of theoretical relevance to the typology model (affectivity, personality, and violence in the family-of-origin). Proactively versus reactively categorized participants were (a) more dominant and less angry during a 10-min interpartner interaction, (b) more antisocial and aggressive-sadistic and less dependent, and (c) more frequently classified as psychopathic (17% vs. 0%). Research and clinical implications of the system are discussed, as is the potential overlap between the reactively and proactively categorized partner-violent men in this study with previously identified types.

Divorce prediction studies (e.g., Gottman, Coan, Carrere, & Swanson, 1998) suggest that couples' eventual divorce can be very accurately predicted from a number of different variables. Recent attention to these studies has failed to consider the need to crossvalidate prediction equations and to consider the prevalence of divorce in the population. We analyze archival data to demonstrate that accuracy and predictive value drops precipitously during crossvalidation. We conclude that results of studies without crossvalidation analyses should be interpreted with extreme caution, no matter how impressive the initial results appear to be.

We review the risk and protective factors for child sexual abuse. Overall, characteristics of perpetrators, victims, and families of victims were moderate to strong risk factors for child sexual abuse. However, it is difficult to distinguish between risk factors for extra-familial and intra-familial child sexual victimization because most of the studies combined these two types of child sexual abuse, although the risk factors for these two types of child sexual abuse most likely differ. Research in this area is difficult because etiological and prevention models of victimization would differ substantially from those of perpetration. Given the low yearly prevalence of child sexual victimization, very large samples would be necessary to obtain sufficient power. Thus, most studies have used lifetime prevalence, which may provide much useful information but which add substantial time confounds. Finally, child sexual victimization is probably a misnomer, as the nature, impact, and etiology of sexual victimization most likely differs over the large age span of childhood and gender. Because improved models and prevention programs require improved etiological models (based on knowledge of risk and protective factors), we hope that this review will focus stakeholders on the need for continued research in this area. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

We review the risk and protective factors for child emotional abuse. Two main directions can be derived from this review. First and foremost, definitional issues must be resolved. Second, some clues as to important future research directions emerged from the current risk factor literature. Distal historical variables (e.g., relationships with fathers perceived as less caring, and being yelled at daily as a child), current enduring personality factors (e.g., aggression and hostility, neuroticism), environmental stressors (e.g., very low income) and proximal variables (verbal and physical aggression between parents) all appear to be related to child psychological abuse. Once definitional issues are resolved, models beginning with these risk factors should be developed and tested. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

The purpose of this series is to review the strength of risk and protective factors for each of seven forms of family violence: partner physical, psychological, and sexual abuse; child physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and child neglect. Definitions of risk and protective factors are presented, as is the five-stage prevention intervention research cycle. The reviews in this series are designed to provide stakeholders with a convenient summary from which to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current risk and protective factor knowledge. Such reviews are necessary to allow for the eventual construction of etiological models that can support the development of preventive intervention programs and research into their efficacy. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.