Abstract
The notion of transitions is an increasingly central concept in contemporary criminology and such issues are particularly significant in the study of intimate partner violence (IPV). Here, attention focuses on relationship dynamics and movement into and out of relationships for understanding long-term patterns of victimization over the life course. Still, a focus on transitions raises questions about how IPV is patterned over time and across relationships and how this contributes to stability and change in victimization risk over the life span. Our study examines this issue using data from the National Violence Against Women Survey. Findings from latent transition analyses reveal strong evidence for change in victimization experiences across the life course. Among women, those who experienced serious, multifaceted violence are most likely to transition out of relationships followed by transition into subsequent relationships characterized by conflict and aggression and a similar pattern is observed among men. At the same time, men who experience physical aggression in previous relationships are most likely to transition into non-violent relationships, while women with similar experiences are much less differentiated in the types of relationships they enter into. When we account for background characteristics (e.g., respondent’s race, education, and age) and childhood experiences of parental violence, the latter is particularly significant in accounting for exposure to serious IPV in later adulthood. Such findings extend our understanding of how life course transitions connect to violence and offending and highlight processes of continuity and change beyond the traditional focus on criminal offending.
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Notes
There is continued controversy relating to gender differences in domestic violence perpetration and victimization. A recent meta-analysis of research on gender symmetry suggests that while both males and females use violence against partners, females are overrepresented as victims of more serious violence and are more likely to be injured (Archer 2000) .
The term “revictimization” is often associated with the work highlighting the link between childhood sexual victimization and sexual victimization in adolescence and adulthood among women (e.g., Gidycz et al. 1993; Humphrey and White 2000; Krahé et al. 1999; Stermac et al. 2002). Here we extend this idea of revictimization to also include intimate partner violence, focusing on the extent to which violent experiences may be replicated over one’s life course.
The ‘retreat into personal relationships’ may increase the window of risk for IPV beyond that of other types of interpersonal violence (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990), but risk of IPV should still be subject to the broad effects of age and offending that exist across a range of social and cultural contexts.
The specific models we use for our analyses depend a great deal upon the number and measurement of variables. For example, we include different types of violent acts, including what some refer to as emotional or psychological violence as well as stalking behaviors. Previous work using the NVAWS has not always considered these indicators.
Only 10% of female respondents and 14% of males reported a “second ex” relationship and the proportions with three or more previous relationships decrease exponentially. Because violence within intimate relationships is a comparatively infrequent occurrence, this leads to incredibly sparse data and difficulty in estimating complex models.
Of course, violence does not only occur within marital or cohabiting relationships. Ideally, we would also include dating relationships as there is considerable evidence that suggests such relationships may involve just as much, if not more, violence. Unfortunately, while the NVAWS included a category capturing individuals’ experiences of violence by a boyfriend or date (yet no corresponding category for girlfriend/date), there is no way to determine: (1) the nature of the relationship (i.e., one-time date versus long-term relationship); (2) whether one or multiple boyfriends or dates used violence against the respondent; or (3) the temporal ordering of the relationship (i.e., was it a current or former boyfriend or date). Thus, an examination of transitions or changes across these dating relationships is not possible. More importantly, preliminary estimates of violence by boyfriends/dates produce quite small lifetime rates; such rates are not comparable to published estimates on dating violence prevalence by the Centers for Disease Control (2008).
The operationalization of stalking used in the NVAWS and in subsequent publications using the data is similar to the definition of stalking used in the model anti-stalking code for States that was developed by the National Institute of Justice. Stalking in the survey is defined as “a course of conduct directed at a specific person that involves repeated visual or physical proximity, nonconsensual communication, or verbal, written or implied threats, or a combination thereof, that would cause a reasonable person fear,” with repeated meaning on two or more occasions (Tjaden and Thoennes 1998). While neither the model anti-stalking code nor the survey requires stalkers to make credible threats of violence against the victims, both require that the victims feel a high level of fear (“fear of bodily harm”). To be consistent with previous research, we measure stalking in this manner although in additional models (not shown), we find similar results using less restrictive definitions of stalking.
Nylund (2007) provides an excellent discussion of the conceptual and statistical issues involved in latent transition analysis, as well as an elaboration of the relevant formulae that link traditional latent class analysis to latent transition analysis, with or without covariates.
Recent advances in algorithms and computational software allow for the inclusion of variables with the full range of metrics.
While similar to factor analysis, LCA and LTA are distinct from other latent variable approaches such as “LISREL” models because they specify a multidimensional discrete latent variable using a cross-classification of two or more observed discrete variables and are specifically designed for use with nominal or categorical level variables.
Typically, LTA models utilize prospective longitudinal panel data. The NVAWS, however, used a very detailed retrospective strategy to collect information on lifetime experiences of victimization, including a series of questions to determine the nature of the relationship between victim and offender. As noted, in the case of violence by intimates, respondents were asked whether they experienced violence by a current spouse or live-in partner, or a previous spouse or live-in partner. Our dependent variables are thus logically situated in time (i.e., a former relationship precedes a current relationship) and latent transition analyses can be used to examine the transition from time 1 (former relationship) to time 2 (current relationship).
Because not all respondents in the sample have both a previous and current partner, we include variables that indicate whether an individual reported a current or previous relationship. These variables, along with the violence indicators, make up the latent class indicators or manifest variables in the model. In estimating the latent class models, one class is fixed for both current and previous partners to include males and females who do not report that type of relationship.
To determine the number of classes necessary in order to best summarize the data, we examined the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) statistic. Generally, a low BIC statistic is desirable and suggests a good fitting model (see Clogg 1995; McCutcheon 1987). In addition, we also considered the interpretability of the results and whether they made substantive sense (Reboussin et al. 1998).
Note that these are not mutually exclusive categories; some of the respondents were only involved in a current relationship and reported no previous spouse or cohabiting partner, a smaller group had previously been involved with an intimate partner but were not in an intimate relationship at the time of the survey, and approximately one-quarter reported both a current and previous intimate relationship.
Readers may question why a class involving no violence among previous partners does not emerge from the data. There are a number of reasons why this is the case and we have tried to make transparent our coding and model decisions. First, the models depend greatly upon the data and coding decisions as well as the constraints used (see Nagin and Odgers 2010). In our models, we constrain the first class to include those respondents who did not have a particular type of relationship (i.e., previous or current) because we wanted to capture patterns including moving into and out of violence as well as into and out of relationships. The sparseness of the data (the fact that victimization is a relatively rare occurrence within a nationally representative sample) meant that adding in additional constraints created models that would not converge. Second, recall that these are all probabilities; within a particular class, respondents have greater or lesser likelihoods of particular forms of violence. Finally, as we expand upon in the discussion, it may be useful for respondents to reflect more negatively on those relationships that have indeed ended—thus, they may be somewhat more likely to report violence or other problems in those relationships.
The probabilities of violence within these classes, and particularly Class II, differ by gender and consequently the interpretation of the patterns differs as well. Among women, there is a clear and qualitative distinction between the classes of violence we call physical aggression and multifaceted violence; physical aggression is characterized primarily by elevated probabilities of the physical forms of violence compared to the verbal or coercive forms while multifaceted violence involves quite high probabilities of all forms of violence (in fact these probabilities are higher relative to the other classes for women). In the case of men, however, the class we call limited multi-faceted violence exhibits comparatively high probabilities of minor and severe physical violence and relatively low probabilities of verbal aggression and coercive control. In fact, the probabilities are even lower than among the physical aggression class). Our rationale for identifying this class as limited multi-faceted violence is twofold: first, it involves higher probabilities of the physical forms of violence relative to the other classes including stalking and sexual assault. Second, suggesting that physical aggression with former partners is experienced by approximately 24% of men in the sample while limited multi-faceted violence occurs among 15% is more consistent with expectations from previous research on the distribution of these classes in the general population. Identifying and labeling these empirical classes is somewhat subject to interpretation. Nevertheless, it is clear that, particularly with respect to systematic or multifaceted abuse, women’s experiences are more extensive and varied.
It is possible that educational attainment may not temporally precede experiences of IPV (i.e., victimization experiences may affect an individual’s education, or lack thereof). However, our primary goal in including these covariates is to note factors associated with different transition patterns; we refrain from making any statements suggesting particular causes of these patterns.
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Carbone-Lopez, K., Rennison, C.M. & Macmillan, R. The Transcendence of Violence Across Relationships: New Methods for Understanding Men’s and Women’s Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence Across the Life Course. J Quant Criminol 28, 319–346 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-011-9143-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-011-9143-9