Assessing Intimate Partner Violence: A Context Sensitive Aggression Scale

Abstract

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, researchers began exploring the differences in men who physically abused their female intimate partners. Since that time, there has been an emergence of research on that topic which has led to the development of batterer typologies. These men were identified around the issues of behavioral characteristics, traits, emotional responses, and experiences. Shelter advocates, for the most part, have presented a relatively one-dimensional view of abusive men based on their experiences with battered women and their children. This author proposes a continuum of aggressive acts with the intention of creating a context that could aid in assessment and intervention when intimate partner violence (IPV) is an issue. The continuum contains acts of aggression that may occur without a context or pattern of abuse.

KEYWORDS:

• assessment
• conflict
• continuum of aggression
• gender equivalence
• terror
• violence