NCJ Number
221165
Journal
Aggression and Violent Behavior Volume: 12 Issue: 6 Dated: November/December 2007 Pages: 658-667
Date Published
November 2007
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This article responds to Gondolf's criticism (see NCJ-221164) of the authors' recent claims that the so-called Duluth Model for batterer intervention is a flawed paradigm and a failed treatment strategy based on evaluation research findings.
Abstract
In the authors' 2006 paper entitled, "Transforming a Flawed Policy," they reviewed empirical evidence that contradicted the feminist "gender paradigm" claim that intimate partner violence (IPV) is primarily a gender issue. Incidence statistics, the authors argued, show that in North America, personality disturbance and not gender was a better predictor of IPV. This indicates that all policies based on the gender paradigm are flawed because they are based in a false premise. In focusing on the research methodology and knowledge base for Gondolf's arguments, the authors repeat their claim that the Duluth program was based on an initial sample size of only nine men and is rooted in a monolithic model of intimate partner violence that was contradicted by numerous large-samples, methodologically sound studies. These include a meta-analytic study of over 65,000 respondents by Archer (2000), which found women to be slightly more violent than men in IPV contexts. They also include a cross-cultural study of dating violence (n=6,900) by Douglas and Straus (2003), which found that college girls were more violent than college boys across 17 countries. Gondolf does not provide a "gender analysis" of these data, apart from a general claim that women's violence is usually a self-defense measure or that the measurement instrument was flawed. Further, although the Duluth Model claims to be cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), it actually contradicts the tenets of CBT in its practice of gender shaming as an intervention technique. The authors believe the Duluth Model is based on an extreme, negative, and polarized view of men in general and abusive men in particular. 79 references