Gender and Military Contextual Risk Factors for Intimate Partner Aggression

Abstract

This study explored individual and military risk factors for intimate partner aggression (IPA) perpetration among Navy personnel in their second year of service. We found some evidence that job stress was related to higher perpetration among men. Contrary to expectations, ship duty was related to lower perpetration rates, even though it involves more military operational stress and more frequent deployments than does shore duty. Premilitary alcohol problems were a stronger risk factor for men than for women, whereas premilitary patterns of aggressive behavior were a stronger risk factor for women. Recommendations for future research and public health interventions are discussed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We acknowledge the contribution and sponsorship of the Navy Family Advocacy Program. We are grateful to the staff at the Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois, and especially the U.S. Navy recruits who participated in this study. Report No. 10-43 was supported by the Fleet and Family Support Programs, Personnel Support Department (N2), Commander, Navy Installations, under Work Unit No. 6309.

Notes

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The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

This research was conducted in compliance with all applicable federal regulations governing the protection of human subjects in research (protocol NHRC.1996.0001).

¹ To assess the validity of our job-stress index, we conducted a one-way analysis of variance by community. Because stress was estimated for specific jobs, we considered each job a case. Cases were then weighted by the proportion of survey participants with that job within its community. The main effect was significant, F(8, 877) = 348.69, p < .001, as were all pairwise, post hoc comparisons except Aviation versus Submarine and Technical, as well as Medical versus Seabees (rank-ordered weighted means: Seabees, 15.70; Medical, 15.67; Engineering/Hull, 15.32; Submarine/Nuclear, 13.97; Aviation, 13.69; Technical, 12.97; Administration/Deck/Supply, 12.17; Cryptology/ Electronic Warfare/Intelligence, 11.08; and Music, 8.67).

² To assess whether comparisons between military community or job stress and baseline risk factors may have had low statistical power due to sample size, we reanalyzed them including all participants with any relevant baseline data (women, n = 1,758–1,907; men, n = 1,787–2,146; comparisons by community excluded Music, n = 6, and other). We still found few differences. Women in Administration did report more hyperfemininity than did women in Engineering and more hostility than women in Aviation. Men in Aviation reported more hypermasculinity than did medical corpsmen and more drinking problems than men in Medical, Administrative, or Technical ratings. Finally, men in Technical ratings expressed more hostility than did men in Administration. Differences were small, accounting for < 1% of the variance in baseline risk factors. Even in this sample, there were no significant correlations with job stress. We further correlated baseline risk factors with ship/shore status and unit female representation for all participants with follow-up survey data regardless of relationship status (women, n = 581–619; men, n = 472–549). We found one significant correlation: as for the study sample, women reporting premilitary victimization were slightly overrepresented on ship duty (r = .08, p < .05).