Measuring spouse aggression

Abstract

Relationship aggression has received increasing attention over the past decade. National violence surveys have indicated that nearly 1.6 million women in the United states are beaten by their male partners each year. Rates of aggression by women against their male partner approach the frequency of aggression by men against women, but the nature of women's violence is typically less severe. Research on physical violence has identified verbal aggression and other forms of psychological intimidation as frequent precursors of physical aggression in couples. Although previous measures of relationship violence have been developed, none has been incorporated in a broad-band, multidimensional measure of relationship functioning. The current study had as its objective the development of a brief scale to measure aggression in intimate relationships including both physical and nonphysical aggression. The study investigated the internal consistency and temporal stability, as well as the convergent and discriminant validity of this new scale.