Marriage License as a Hitting License: A Comparison of Assaults in Dating, Cohabiting, and Married Couples (From Violence in Dating Relationships, P 33-52, 1989, Maureen A Pirog-Good and Jan E Stets, eds. -- See NCJ-118347)

• NCJ Number: 118349
• Author(s): J E Stets; M A Straus
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 20 pages
• Grant Number(s): T32MH15161
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Mental Health
• Sale Source: Praeger Publishers
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This paper was presented at the 1988 meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Annotation

This study compared the rate of physical assault between partners in 526 dating couples, 237 cohabiting couples, and 5,005 married couples.

Abstract

For the dating couples, a survey was administered to a probability sample of students at a large midwestern university during the spring of 1987. The data on married and cohabiting couples came from the National Family Violence Resurvey conducted in the summer of 1985 (Straus and Gelles, 1986). The Conflict Tactics Scale was used to measure the incidence of violence in dating, cohabiting, and marital relationships. Respondents were asked how often within the past year they engaged in specified acts of physical violence against their partners. Findings indicate that the highest rate of assault was among the cohabiting couples; violence was most severe among cohabiting couples; and for all three marital status groups, the most frequent pattern was for both partners to become violent, followed by female-only violence and male-only violence. After controlling for respondent gender, female-only violence was still more prevalent than male-only violence among all three groups. After controlling for age, female-only violence was similar to male-only violence. The study speculates about reasons for the findings. 5 figures, 3 tables, 3 notes, 56 references.