Same-Day Correlates and Prior-Day Predictors of Couples’ Violent Behaviors Based upon Partners’ Daily Reports

Abstract

Although previous research identified predictors of violent events within violent heterosexual couples, findings were limited to the woman’s reports, to her perceptions; his assessments were not obtained. This exploratory study was conducted to gain understanding of proximal predictors of violence assessed in “real-time” from the perspective of both partners. Fifteen adult heterosexual couples in which the woman reported experiencing partner violence in the prior 30 days were enrolled in a primary care clinic. Each partner provided separate daily telephone reports for eight weeks via an automated Interactive Voice Response (IVR), concerning the previous day’s violence, alcohol use, stressors, emotional reactions and concerns for children. Same-day correlates were determined by Pearson correlations while prior-day predictors were identified via vector autoregression. Same-day correlations show that men’s violence was associated with almost every other variable while women’s violence correlated with men’s violence, men’s drug use, women’s alcohol use, anger, closeness, hassles, and all men’s negative feelings. Using prior-day predictors, men’s violence was related to feelings (primarily hers), but women’s violence was more dependent upon feelings of both of them as well as women’s prior-day violence and alcohol use. Men’s violence was dependent upon their partners’ prior-day feelings and the men’s lack of concern about effects of violence on children. Women’s violence was also dependent upon women’s prior-day feelings, as well as women’s violence, alcohol use, marital closeness, and men’s concern for children. Although the co-occurrence of men’s and women’s violence has been seen before, in this study only women’s violence was linked to alcohol use.