A mixed-method analysis of women's intimate partner violence

This mixed-method study aims to elucidate the relevance of gender in women???s intimate partner violence through an ecologically-informed analysis of individual differences in attachment and personality and social contexts. Findings suggest that the Conflict Tactics Scales led to inflated estimates of women???s violence through the misidentification of play as violence and through the categorization of a range of behaviors, called mock-violence, that fall along a continuum from playful to short of meaningfully violent. Study findings also support the position that gender fundamentally shapes the contexts, meanings, and interpretations of women???s aggressive behaviors and is thus central to any analysis of intimate partner violence. Together, these findings lend support to arguments for re-visiting fundamental issues of problem definition and measurement