Contextual Predictors of Intimate Partner Violence Among Ethnically Diverse Newlyweds Living with Low Incomes

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a highly prevalent public health challenge, tied to lasting negative consequences for physical and psychological health, parenting and child development, and economic stability. Typically conceptualized as a private form of violence, most efforts to predict IPV have focused on individual-level risk markers (e.g., substance use, childhood experiences) or couple-level risk markers (e.g., relationship satisfaction, communication skills). However, because individuals and couples are affected by the environments they inhabit, the contexts within which couples operate may also impact the likelihood that a couple will experience or engage in IPV. Through three studies, this dissertation aimed to examine contextual predictors of IPV, as well as the ways in which such contextual predictors can exacerbate or decrease the risk of individual and dyadic predictors on IPV. In an effort to synthesize prior work, Study 1 examined whether the accumulation of selected factors across individual, relational, and contextual socio-ecological layers, when considered simultaneously, predicts IPV. Results showed that even after adjusting for macro-level contextual influences (e.g., neighborhood and social network factors), individual and dyadic variables presented clear risk factors of IPV initial status. Associations between contextual variables and IPV were less robust, hinting at the possibility that the macro-contexts assessed in Study 1 may be less predictive of IPV than micro-level contextual factors. Therefore, the goal of Study 2 was to examine the effects of three micro-level contexts – perceived stress, financial strain, and experiences of discrimination. Specifically, Study 2 tested whether adversities experienced early in life serve to channel individuals into stressful circumstances (i.e., micro-contexts) that then evoke situational IPV in adulthood. Among husbands, early adversity was linked to IPV via stress, whereas for wives, no such mediation emerged. These findings indicate that the situations that are a defining feature of situational IPV may themselves be a reflection of the adversities that men face early in life; in the absence of these stressors, the association between early adversity and later IPV falls to non-significance. Finally, Study 3 of this dissertation examined whether the well-established association between psychological and physical IPV is moderated by the demands imposed upon couples by living in socially and economically disadvantaged contexts. Findings indicate that psychological and physical IPV were more likely to co-vary among husbands facing higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. I also tested whether negative and ineffective communication during relationship-focused conversations would moderate the association between psychological and physical IPV. Behavioral processes did indeed moderate this association, and the effect of behavioral processes was independent of the moderating effect of sociodemographic risk. Across the three studies, findings challenge the notion that IPV should be conceptualized exclusively as a private phenomenon. Instead, results lend general support to the value of understanding couples within their larger ecological niches and underscore the idea that that contextual risk factors, in addition to individual and relational variables, have the potential to influence whether couples’ arguments take on aggressive or even violent forms