Assessment of the Reliability of the Conflict Tactics Scales

Abstract

This article reports meta-analyses of self-agreement and partners' agreement for physical aggression in relationships, measured by the Conflict Tactics Scales. Evidence from concordance rates was inconclusive, and the limited correlational data indicated high interpartner agreement. Differences between self-reports and partners' reports for men and women were analyzed to address the following hypotheses: Men but not women underreport their own aggression, both sexes underreport their own aggression, and men underreport their victimization. In 18 studies of couples, mean weighted effect sizes showed higher ratings of aggression from partners than from self-reports for both men and women. In 43 studies of unmatched men and women, the mean differences were smaller than for couples but were greater for men than for women. Overall, this evidence indicated systematic underreporting in self-reports by both sexes (Hypothesis 2), which was greater for men among the larger number of studies in which the men and the women did not come from matched couples (Hypothesis 1).