Faculty Bibliography

PIP: Physicians' assessment of domestic partner abuse is hindered by the lack of a simple, quick, reliable instrument that determines the occurrence and effect of abuse among female patients. The Partner Abuse Interview, a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale, has the potential to meet this need. This instrument was tested in 90 consecutive female patients who presented to a suburban family practice clinic at a US university hospital in 1993. The interview took 3 minutes to complete when there was no domestic violence and 10-15 minutes when violence was detected. Inter-rater reliability was above 90% for all three definitions of partner abuse: any physical aggression, severe violence, and partner abuse. 32%, 16%, and 13% of respondents, respectively, fell into these categories. Pushing, grabbing, and shoving were the most frequently reported abusive behaviors. Compared with women in nonabusive relationships, women in relationships characterized by fear/injury had a lower family income, lower marital satisfaction scores, and less education. More widespread use of this interview is recommended by physicians to identify women in need of treatment and counseling.

Given the vast amount of codeable information in marital interactions, observational coding systems must emphasize particular classes of behavior. The most widely used marital coding scheme, the Marital Interaction Coding System (MICS), like many older behavioral coding systems, emphasizes verbal content over affect. Changes made to the MICS between versions III and IV are described; they were intended to increase the system's use of coded affect and to decrease autodependence in sequential analysis. We used an archival data set of 994 couples' videotaped conflict negotiations coded with the MICS. As intended, the MICS-IV, relative to the MICS-III, was found to have the advantage of capturing more non-verbal affect expressed during marital interactions, which resulted in stronger interactional contingencies (e.g. Wife Blame-->Husband Blame, Husband Facilitation-->Wife Facilitation). The MICS-IV also yielded significantly lower levels of spurious autodependence.

This study examined the relationship between alcohol consumption and marital aggression in a community sample (N = 272) assessed in a longitudinal study at premarriage and at 6, 18, and 30 months of marriage. Participants completed self-report measures of alcohol problems and total alcohol consumption, aggressive personality style, marital aggression, marital adjustment, and divorce potential. Husbands' alcohol problems were associated with serious aggression at premarriage and at 6 months. Alcohol use interacted with aggressive personality traits in predicting aggression at 18 months. Husbands' premarital aggression, but not alcohol problems, was predictive of wives' future steps toward divorce and lower marital adjustment. Results are discussed in relation to the marital mediational model of alcohol and aggression in marriage and to the need to account for developmental changes in the relation between alcohol and aggression during the early years of marriage. © 1995 American Psychological Association.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: (a) to review research indicating that prevention efforts are needed for marital violence; (b) to present the rationale for a prevention approach derived from a behavioral-cognitive, social learning perspective; and (c) to describe a new behavioral-cognitive secondary prevention program that we are developing for engaged and newly married couples at risk for marital violence. Given these goals, we first present data demonstrating that physical aggression is often introduced early in a relationship and is likely to continue without intervention. After reviewing questions about the efficacy of marital violence treatment programs, we propose that prevention is a potentially important means of reducing and eliminating relationship violence. We then review behavioral-cognitive models of marital violence and the empirical data supporting these models. Based upon this review, we introduce a new behavioral-cognitive program (PREP/SAVE) designed to prevent relationship violence. Finally, we briefly present our pilot work and planned research on the efficacy of PREP/SAVE, along with some issues for consideration by future researchers. © 1995 American Assciation of Applied and Preventive Psychology (AAAPP).

Two measures of marital satisfaction, the Quality of Marriage Index (R. Norton, 1983) and the Relationship Satisfaction Questionnaire (D. D. Burns & S. L. Sayers, 1992) were compared to a measure of marital adjustment, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (G. B. Spanier, 1976). The measures showed excellent convergent validity (high correlations among each other and with other measures of marital functioning) and discriminant validity (low or nonsignificant correlations with psychopathology subscales). However, spouses' ratings of frequency of disagreements differed significantly from their ratings of satisfaction in the same areas. Formulas for converting scores among the measures are given, and the measures were found to have modest classification powers. The relative advantages and disadvantages of adjustment and satisfaction measures are discussed, and recommendations are made for when to use each type of measure.