Violence in general
Violence directed at dating partners
Violence in general
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The evidence for a relationship
between child experiences and violent behaviour in later years is mixed. For example,
Widom (1991) conducted a prospective study of the criminal sequelae associated with
childhood neglect and physical or sexual abuse. She compared 908 abused individuals and
667 matched controls with respect to criminal behaviour exhibited in adolescence. Those in
the abused group had come to the attention of the courts between 1967 and 1971 as a result
of having been neglected by parents or having been physically or sexually abused. Matches
were found for about three-quarters of these children; the control group was comprised of
children matched by gender, race, date of birth and hospital of birth (for children under
school age) or class in elementary school (for children of school age). Widom found that
abused/neglected individuals were indeed more likely than non-abused comparisons to come
to the attention of justice authorities as juvenile offenders (26.0% and 16.8% arrest
rates respectively). The abused and neglected adolescents also had more offences recorded
and were significantly younger at the time of their first offence. Yet with respect to violent
offences, there were no significant overall differences between the arrest rates of the
abused and control groups (4.2% vs. 2.8%). Separate analyses by gender indicated that
abused/neglected males were not significantly different from control males but
surprisingly, abused/neglected females were marginally more likely than control females to
have been arrested for a violent crime (1.9% vs. .3%).
In contrast, Truscott (1992) tested
the cycle of violence hypothesis with an all-male sample consisting of 65 young offenders
and 25 grade 10 students. Subjects were asked whether they had ever witnessed or
experienced violence by their parents (50 out of 90 replied in the affirmative) and
whether they had themselves been violent with others (42 out of 90 had been). Among those
who admitted to behaving violently, the majority (69%) came from a violent family. Violent
adolescent behaviour was significantly associated with being physically as well as
verbally aggressed against by the father4 but there was no relationship with
maternal verbal or physical aggression nor with paternal or maternal violence witnessed.
The discrepancy in the results of these two studies might be due to the use of self-report
rather than official abuse records in the Truscott study. As pointed out earlier, the
latter technique greatly underestimates the incidence of child abuse, which would in turn
suppress between-group differences.
4 R2=.21 and R2=.20 respectively.
Some researchers have found that
under-reporting of abuse incidents even occurs in self report studies (Della Femina,
Yeager & Lewis, 1990; Stein & Lewis, 1992). In a follow-up investigation of
formerly incarcerated juvenile offenders, 69 of the original 97 subjects were
reinterviewed nine years later (see Lewis, Shanok, Pincus & Glaser, 1979). When asked
about abuse suffered in childhood, 26 respondents provided information that was
inconsistent with that obtained in the original study; eighteen subjects denied or
minimized abuse experiences whereas the remaining eight described abuse incidents that
they failed to reveal during the first study. In an effort to clarify the discrepancies,
the investigators requested another interview with these 26 people. Eleven respondents
agreed to be interviewed again, eight of whom had denied abuse in the follow up and 3 of
whom revealed abuse for the first time. When asked to account for the discrepancies in
their reports, all eleven subjects maintained that they had been abused and gave some
reason for withholding the information. The explanations given for denying abuse included
embarrassment, a wish to protect parents, a conscious wish to forget the past and a lack
of rapport with the interviewer (Della Fernina et al., 1990). The findings of this study
are especially interesting given the tendency for the general public to expect that
delinquent and/or criminal populations might be motivated to exaggerate childhood abuse in
an effort to elicit sympathy. In reality, the respondents' concealment of abuse
experiences may have resulted in a muting of differences between groups, thus hindering
the researchers' efforts to determine the criminal effects of experiencing family
violence.
When considering the connection
between child maltreatment and later violent criminal behaviour by adolescents, Widom
(1989b) found that some research supported the violence begets violence hypothesis while
other investigations did not. She concluded that although the majority of abused
children do not become violent, there was a definite relationship between the two
variables (Widom, 1991). A similar statement would characterize the studies summarized in
this report. Furthermore, examination of the studies reviewed here reveals that
methodological problems continue to plague the research, impacting on the interpretation
of findings. One serious problem with investigations of adolescents' aggressive behaviour
is that they often rely on official records to identify violent delinquent behaviour. It
is possible that the effects of childhood exposure to violence are thus confounded with
the effects of processing by the justice system.
Violence directed at dating
partners
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Recently, it has been recognized that
a phenomenon analogous to spousal violence is not entirely uncommon among adolescent
dating couples (Roscoe & Callahan, 1985; O'Keeffe, Brockopp & Chew, 1986).
Research on courtship violence is important because it may provide glimpses of interaction
patterns that are carried forward into adult intimate relationships (Makepeace, 1981).
Carlson (1990) recruited adolescents aged 13 to 18 years from 4 residential treatment
centres and a youth shelter and asked about violence directed at dating partners.
Respondents from non-violent families were compared with those who had witnessed marital
violence (almost 1/2 reported seeing their fathers hit their mothers, 26% saw mothers hit
fathers). Counter to expectation, no differences were found between witnesses and
non-witnesses with respect to attitudes about the appropriateness of using violence
against a boyfriend/girlfriend or in the actual use of violence against a dating partner.
In short, the levels of dating violence reported were similar to those found in research
with non-clinical samples of high school students. However, estimates suggest that those
levels are actually fairly high, with one quarter to one half of high school students
having experienced an abusive relationship 5 (Myers Avis, 1992; Bergman, 1992).
5Although no national data exists regarding the extent of
physical violence in high school dating relationships, a recent national survey conducted
with Canadian university and college students indicates that 22.3% of women had been
physically assaulted by a partner within the last 12 months, while 35% had been so
victimized in the years since they left high school (DeKeseredy & Kelly, 1993).
Carlson proposed that the adolescents
in her sample had experienced numerous other stressors in their lives which were not
accounted for, e.g., physical abuse, sexual abuse, divorce and/or substance abuse by one
or both parents, possibly overshadowing the effect of witnessing violence. In order to
test this hypothesis, she conducted another study with the same sample, this time
differentiating between 4 groups: those who had only experienced child abuse (n=6), those
who had only witnessed marital violence (n=12), those who had both experienced abuse and
witnessed marital violence (n=50) and those who had experienced neither type of abuse
(n=25; Carlson, 1991). Composite measures were created from a small number of open-ended
questions tapping approval of violence and use of violence. There was a main effect of
gender wherein males were more likely to approve of violence. Males also had marginally
higher scores for use of violence. However, there was no significant effect related to
abuse or witness status, even when gender was statistically controlled. This finding is
surprising given earlier studies demonstrating that teens involved in dating violence had
higher rates of maltreatment in childhood (Roscoe & Callahan, 1985; Reuterman &
Burcky, 1989).
Carlson listed a number of possible
reasons for her non-significant findings, including the dearth of information on the
nature and extent of the violence that subjects experienced/ witnessed and the confounding
of family violence variables with other potential risk factors. Additional methodological
problems that Carlson did not consider were the unequal (and small) cell sizes and the
unacceptably low internal consistencies achieved for the violence "scales" she
constructed (a=.56 and a=.64 for approval of violence and use of violence respectively).
Both these factors could have obscured significant relationships. Studies using a scale
with better psychometric properties (Child Witness to Violence Interview; Jaffe et al.,
1989) have indicated that children exposed to wife battering are indeed more likely to
condone violence as a means of resolving conflict in interpersonal relationships.
Unfortunately, no studies have attempted to follow up this effect into adolescence. A
recent summary of the research describing long-term consequences of physical abuse
revealed that the bulk of adolescent studies dealt with the question of delinquency6
rather than dating relationships (Malinosky-Rummell & Hansen, 1993).
6The majority of these studies have
already been reviewed by Widom (1989b).
