Risk for intimate partner violence and child physical abuse: psychosocial characteristics of multirisk male and female Navy recruits.

Abstract

This study examined psychosocial characteristics of individuals at risk for perpetrating both intimate partner violence (IPV risk) and child physical abuse (CPA risk). The sample consisted of 775 female and 592 male Navy recruits. The psychosocial variables assessed included symptoms of dysphoria, posttraumatic stress, self-dysfunction, alcohol-related problems, and drug use. IPV risk and CPA risk were positively associated with approximately 9% of the total sample considered multirisk (i.e., positive for both IPV risk and CPA risk). Results of regression analyses revealed that patterns of predictors (demographic and psychosocial variables) for IPV-risk only and CPA-risk only differed with multirisk individuals characterized by the combined predictors of both types of violence risk. Nearly half (47.2%) of the multirisk individuals were characterized by multiple (i.e., two or more) clinical elevations on the psychosocial characteristics assessed.