Intimate Terrorism and Situational Couple Violence in General Surveys

Abstract

In this article, we argue that past efforts to distinguish among types of intimate partner violence in general survey data have committed a critical error--using data on current spouses to develop operationalizations of intimate terrorism and situational couple violence. We use ex-spouse data from the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) to develop new operationalizations. We then demonstrate that NVAWS current spouse data contain little intimate terrorism; we argue that this is likely to be the case for all general surveys. In addition, the ex-spouse data confirm past findings regarding a variety of differences between intimate terrorism and situational couple violence, including those predicted by feminist theories.