NCJ Number
188004
Journal
Aggression and Violent Behavior Volume: 6 Issue: 2-3 Dated: March-June 2001 Pages: 353-356
Date Published
2001
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article discusses patterns across literature reviews of the risk and protective factors for each of seven forms of family violence: partner physical, psychological, and sexual abuse; and child physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and child neglect.
Abstract
The authors note that both child and partner literatures have large research bases on risk factors for physical abuse, but relatively few articles on psychological or sexual abuse (or child neglect). In addition, co-occurrence of forms of maltreatment within families is high, but little integrative work has been conducted. The authors argue that the overlap of both occurrence and risk factors across forms of maltreatment suggests that both etiological and intervention models would be improved by considering all forms of maltreatment more explicitly in a family, rather than dyadic, context. Borrowing from developments in other areas of family violence could assist the less studied forms in catching up much faster than if they worked in isolation; create synergies by modeling common and unique risk factors across multiple forms of violence; and force researchers who are studying the more researched forms of family violence to explicitly incorporate co-occurrence into their studies. Such integration does not mean merely adding a questionnaire or two to an already designed protocol. Rather, it involves asking typically unasked questions about causal pathways and what risk and protective factors promote one type of maltreatment in one family, another type of maltreatment in another family, and co-occurrence of maltreatment types in a third family. 4 references