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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.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, Vol. 9 No. 3, March 2003 278-301DOI: 10.1177/1077801202250072© 2003 Sage Publications

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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,

Gondolf, Beeman / WOMEN’S ACCOUNTS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 279



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,

280 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / March 2003



& 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




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




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.




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




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




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




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




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





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)



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


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



(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%




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%).


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.



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




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


TABLE 3Woman’s and Man’s Issues by Reassault Category (299 Cases)


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.



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


TABLE 4Violence Type and Incident Pattern by Reassault Category (299 Cases)


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



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




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




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




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 and Batterer Intervention Systems.

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.



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