http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3108-4812
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ABSTRACT
Drinking is associated with a higher rate of violent offending among males and a higher rate of violent victimization among females. Using comparable self-reported data, this study examines between the United States (n = 2,363) and Japan (n = 1,660) whether the gender difference in alcohol-related Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is explained by alcohol-aggression expectancy. The results indicate that though males are more likely than females to expect that alcohol would make them more aggressive, alcohol-aggression expectancy cannot explain the gender difference in alcohol-related IPV. In both countries, instead, alcohol use of males most strongly accounted for the gender difference in alcohol-related IPV.
Acknowledgments
The American and Japanese data used in this study are from the project, Gender, Alcohol and Culture: An International Study (GENACIS). GENACIS is a collaborative international project affiliated with the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol and coordinated by GENACIS partners from the University of North Dakota, Aarhus University, the Alcohol Research Group/Public Health Institute, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the University of Melbourne, and the Research Institute of Addiction Switzerland. Content is the responsibility of the authors and does not reflect the official position of NIAAA or the National Institutes of Health.
Funding
Support for aspects of the project comes from the World Health Organization, the Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources Programme of the European Commission (Concerted Action QLG4-CT-2001-0196), the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism(NIAAA) of the National Institutes of Health (Grants R21 AA012941 and R01s AA04610 and AA015775, and P50 AA005595), the German Federal Ministry of Health, the Pan American Health Organization, and Swiss national funds. Support for individual country surveys was provided by government agencies and other national sources. The study leaders and funding sources for data sets used in this report are: Japan: Shinji Shimizu, Ph.D., Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant 13410072); USA: Thomas K. Greenfield, Ph.D., U.S. (NIAAA Grant number P50 AA005595).
Notes
1 Because these three measures (problem drinking, IPV, and alcohol-aggression expectancy) are dependent and theoretical variables that are critical for the present study, cases with a missing value on these measures were excluded. The analyses done with missing values imputed instead of excluded, however, produced results that are identical to the results reported here.
2 The Japanese sample was limited to persons who were between the ages of 20 and 70 years old. U.S. respondents who were younger than 20 or older than 70 were, therefore, excluded to match the age range of the two samples.
3 Household income was originally measured as an ordinal variable in both countries. The median income category for the present study used for the U.S. sample was $30,000 and for the Japanese sample was ¥7 million, calculated separately for each country.
4 The U.S. questions asked, “In the past year, has your (husband/wife/partner) ever done one of the following things?” (victimization) and “In the past year, have you ever done one of the following things to your (husband/wife/partner)?” (offending). The Japanese questions asked (in Japanese), “People can be physically aggressive in many ways, for example, punching, or in some other way. What is the most physically aggressive thing your spouse/partner has done to you during the last 2 years?” (victimization) and “What is the most physically aggressive thing you have done during the last 2 years to your spouse/partner?” (offending).
5 Behaviors referred to in the two IPV questions in the U.S. questionnaire were: “thrown something at you,” “pushed, grabbed, shoved,” “slapped, hit, bit, kicked or tried to hit,” “beat up, choked, burned or scalded,” “threatened with a knife or gun,” and “used knife or gun.” Behaviors referred to in the two IPV questions in the Japanese questionnaire were: “push, shove, grab, slap, punch, kick, beat up, throw something at you, hit you with an object, threaten you, threaten you with a weapon, cut you with a knife, and other.”
6 The U.S. question asked, “If you were to drink enough alcohol to feel the effects, what are the chances that you would become aggressive?” with answer choices: “a very strong chance,” “a strong chance,” “some chance (50/50),” not much chance,” and “no chance at all.” The question in the Japanese survey asked “When you drink, how true would you say it is that you become more aggressive toward other people?” with answer choices: “usually true,” “sometimes true,” and “never true.”
7 This may be the case of Simpson’s paradox (Pearl Citation2014) in which a significance of a relationship between two variables may change once another variable is introduced.
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Notes on contributors
Miyuki Fukushima Tedor
MIYUKI FUKUSHIMA TEDOR is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Anthropology, and Sociology at Cleveland State University. She received B.A.s in philosophy, psychology, and sociology, an M.A. in sociology, and a Ph.D. in sociology, all from the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include cross-national examination, between the United States and Japan, of theories of crime; gender and crime; juvenile delinquency; and drugs and alcohol use and crime.
Linda M. Quinn
LINDA M. QUINN is a Senior College Lecturer and Statistical Consultant in the Mathematics department at Cleveland State University since 2009. She has been involved in statistical applications and analyses of research studies since 1989. She has been a lead statistician at such institutions as the Cleveland Research Institute, Case Western Reserve University Department of Medicine, the program in Health Care Research at the Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, AcroMed Corporation, and American Greetings. She was an independent statistical consultant for over 20 years applying statistics across many disciplines. Her graduate studies were at Cleveland State University, Bowling Green State University, and Case Western Reserve University. She has M.S. degrees in statistics, computer science, and operations research and a doctorate in educational leadership and lifelong learning.
Sharon C. Wilsnack
SHARON C. WILSNACK received her B.A. from Kansas State University, her M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University, and studied as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Freiburg, Federal Republic of Germany. She is presently Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Wilsnack’s background includes experience as a substance abuse therapist and treatment program director as well as in research and medical education. Sharon Wilsnack and Richard Wilsnack direct a 20-year longitudinal study of drinking behavior in U.S. women, and coordinate an international collaborative research project on gender and alcohol that involves researchers from more than 40 countries. Sharon Wilsnack is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She served as a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee to Study Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, as a member of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism/National Institutes of Health, and on numerous other boards and advisory groups concerned with alcohol abuse and women’s health. She was a member and panel chair of the NIAAA Task Force on College Drinking and a member of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment’s Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Consensus Panel on Special Needs of Women in Substance Abuse Treatment.
Richard W. Wilsnack
RICHARD W. WILSNACK, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA. He received a B.A. from Pomona College (Claremont, California), an M.Sc. (Econ.) from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. His research interests include gender influences on alcohol consumption and related problems; cross-cultural patterns of alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms; and longitudinal and retrospective research on drinking histories. Sharon Wilsnack and Richard Wilsnack have directed a 20-year national longitudinal study of alcohol use and abuse in U.S. women, and have coordinated the multinational GENACIS project, which includes comparable general population surveys of men’s and women’s alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in 38 countries on 5 continents. They are currently engaged in multinational research on alcohol-related harms to individuals other than the drinkers.
Thomas K. Greenfield
THOMAS K. GREENFIELD, Ph.D., directed the NIAAA-supported National Alcohol Research Center from 1999 to 2015, and continues as the Scientific Director of the Alcohol Research Group, of the Public Health Institute, in Emeryville, California. He is also core training faculty for the Clifford Attkisson Clinical Services Research Training Program in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF. He currently leads, with Kate Karriker-Jaffe, an R01 grant on alcohol’s harms to others (AHTO) among U.S. adults, and with Sharon Wilsnack and Kim Bloomfield is beginning a new international AHTO grant that will examine how national policies are associated with these harms in high, low, and middle income countries. He now serves on the NIH Community Influences on Health Behavior study section.