J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193
DOI 10.1007/s10896-009-9282-z
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Violent Acts and Injurious Consequences: An Examination
of Competing Hypotheses About Intimate Partner Violence
Using Agency-Based Data
Tara D. Warner
Published online: 21 October 2009
# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract The current study proposed and tested a series of
competing hypotheses about intimate partner violence in
the 2006 National Incident Based Reporting System
(NIBRS), a dataset of criminal incidents known to the
police. Three research questions were presented concerning
gender differences in victim identity, victim-offender
relationships, and victim injury with hypotheses derived
from the feminist, family violence, and general violence
perspectives. Victim-based analyses were consistent pri-
marily with expectations of the feminist perspective,
although aspects of the general violence perspective were
supported as well: Women were more likely than men to
experience violence from an intimate; they were more
likely to experience violence from an intimate partner than
from any other perpetrator; and when victimized by an
intimate, women were usually more likely to be injured.
These results highlight the uniqueness of violence between
intimates relative to other types of violence.
Keywords Family violence . Intimate partner violence
(IPV) . NIBRS . Feminist perspective . Gender differences
Introduction
Violence between intimates and violence within families
are contested phenomena in the social sciences. Feminist
scholars focus their efforts on violence against women,
conceptualizing it as a distinct type of violence rooted in
T. D. Warner (*)
Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University,
222 Williams Hall,
Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA
e-mail: twarner@bgsu.edu
the patriarchal norms of the social structure and predomi-
nately male-perpetrated (Kurz 1989). Family violence
scholars, on the other hand, many of whom also consider
themselves to be feminists (e.g., see Straus 2007), consider
violence against women as one component of a broader
universe of family violence, and note almost equal rates of
perpetration by men and women. From this perspective,
violence between women and their intimate partners, and
violence within families more generally, result from the
expression of everyday frustrations exacerbated by an
overall normalization of violence within society (e.g. Straus
and Gelles 1986).
Proponents of both approaches cite different sources of
evidence for their theories, and have been in debate for
decades. Johnson (1995) attempted to bridge this gap by
proposing a multidimensional conceptualization (e.g., a
typology) of violence between intimates, highlighting that
distinctly differently types of intimate partner violence were
being measured by both groups. In addition to this
typology, another perspective on the debate has emerged.
Felson (2002) proposes analyzing intimate partner violence
from a violence perspective. According to this perspective,
violence between intimates, and/or within the family is no
different from any other type of violence. Gender differ-
ences occurring in incidents of intimate partner violence
(IPV) reflect gender differences in individual character-
istics, such as physical strength, and not gender differences
in socially defined roles (e.g., patriarchy).
These three perspectives can be distinguished from each
other in terms of their identified cause of IPV, and the
evidence cited to support that defined cause. In this paper, I
review these three perspectives, highlighting their distinc-
tions. Next I derive hypotheses on IPV specific to each
perspective, and test each using data from the National
Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for the year
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2006. The current analysis differs from past research by
proposing and testing hypotheses informed by all three
perspectives on IPV, and by focusing on crimes reported to
police rather than self-report surveys or shelter data.
Johnson suggests (2005) that agency data have the potential
for containing what he identifies as the various types of
violent behavior (discussed below), and Miles-Doan (1998)
notes that focusing on incidents serious enough to warrant
police involvement may minimize gender-based reporting
bias.
Background
The Feminist Perspective
According to the feminist perspective, gender inequality
and relations between men and women are central to
explaining the motives behind intimate partner violence.
Violence between intimates stems from male dominance,
patriarchal societal norms, sexism, and women’s subordi-
nation, and because of this, women are the majority of IPV
victims (Rothenberg 2003). Men use violence to exert
power over women and to control them (Kurz 1989), and
this violence often occurs in the context of a relationship
with a history of coercive control (Johnson 1995). As such,
women are most at risk of experiencing violence at the
hands of an intimate partner (Dobash and Dobash 1995).
Feminist perspectives do acknowledge that women may be
violent towards men, but note that these actions occur most
often out of self-defense (O’Neill 1998) and that violence
has different effects, consequences, and meanings for
women and men (Brush 1990). Given that men are cited
most often as the perpetrator, feminist scholarship tends to
focus on terms such as wife battering and violence against
women, and, as Johnson (2005) noted, the term “domestic
violence” is often linked to notions of this type of male
dominated violence.
Support for the feminist perspective on partner violence
comes primarily from interviews with shelter victims and
emergency room patients, analyses of police reports and
crime surveys, and interviews with male perpetrators in
treatment programs (Archer 2000). These data sources
indicate that women are by far the majority of victims in
incidents of intimate violence. Johnson and Ferraro (2000)
estimated that approximately two million women in the U.
S. are terrorized by an intimate partner. According to
statistics from the National Crime Victimization Survey for
the years 1998–2002, wives were the victim in 84.3% of
IPV incidents, and husbands in 15.7% of incidents (Bureau
of Justice Statistics 2005). In Kernsmith’s (2005) study,
approximately half of the participants in a batterers’
intervention program were female, but the majority of
J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193
women reported using violence in response to prior abuse.
In the National Violence Against Women (NVAW) Survey,
women reported experiencing significantly more violence
by a partner than did men (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000).
Phelan and colleagues (2005) interviewed men and women
seeking emergency medical services and found that women
reported that their partner perpetrated the violence more
often than men reported partner-perpetrated violence.
The Family Violence Perspective
Instead of highlighting the intimate dyad as particularly
unique, researchers adhering to the family violence per-
spective analyze violence within the whole family, giving
equal attention to violence perpetrated by women and men,
as well as violence by parents against children. Here the
unit of analysis is the family, not the relationship between
men and women (Kurz 1989). This perspective views the
family as a system responding to stress and conflict from
the broader social structure (Lenton 1995). The family
violence perspective is not completely at odds with the
feminist perspective, as both perspectives attribute violence
to societal causes. In the feminist perspective, men are
socialized that it is acceptable to use violence against
women; in the family violence perspective, individuals (not
just men) are socialized to view that it is acceptable to act
out frustration and aggression towards family members.
Straus and colleagues (e.g., Straus and Gelles 1986;
Straus et al. 1980) discussed three causes of family
violence. First, the vulnerability of the family to certain
stressors (e.g., economic, health-related, etc.), coupled with
the privacy of the familial institution can exacerbate
members’ underlying propensities toward violence. Second,
society continues to view violence as an acceptable
problem-solving method. Third, family violence results
from an intergenerational transmission of violence, where-
by when parents use physical force to punish children, they
socialize their children into the acceptability of violence.
These scholars perceive the household as having the
potential to be a particularly violent place (Brush 1990).
Much of the support for the family violence perspective
stems from the work of Straus and his colleagues (e.g.
Straus 1980; Straus and Gelles 1986). While feminist
scholars were arguing that victims of IPV were almost
exclusively women, Straus and colleagues, using the
Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) and nationally representative
samples, showed that women and men engage in violent
acts toward intimates with very similar frequency. For
example, a 1975 survey estimated a husband-perpetrated
violence rate of 121 per 1,000 couples, and a wife-
perpetrated rate of 116 (Straus and Gelles 1986). The rates
were similar when the survey was replicated ten years later.
These results were highly controversial, prompting claims
J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193
of “battered husbands” (Steinmetz 1978), and ensuing
debates about victim identities (e.g. Brush 1990; Dobash
et al. 1992; Johnson 2005; Straus 2007). Despite the
controversy, much research following Straus and col-
league’s original work has found similar results of gender
symmetry in intimate partner violence (Archer 2000).
A Typology of Intimate Partner Violence
Archer (2000) noted that within the context of this debate,
only two hypotheses have been proposed to address the
conflicting findings. Dobash et al. (1992) argued that the
Conflict Tactics Scale is an inadequate tool for measuring
intimate partner violence, since it only measures acts and
neglects the contexts and consequences of IPV. They
suggested that any violence by women is in self-defense,
and once injuries are considered, women are the majority of
victims. However it is unclear how, if at all, feminist
scholars reconcile whether the high likelihood of injury for
women is the result of patriarchal social constructions, or is
simply an artifact of men’s greater physical strength relative
to women (Felson 1996). This could be especially
problematic in studies arguing that men engage in more
serious violence against women when seriousness is
measured in terms of the extent of injury sustained (e.g.,
Brush 1990; Dobash et al. 1992) without including
information about perpetrator motivation or intent (e.g.,
Perry and Fromuth 2005; Stanley et al. 2006). Also, Archer
(2000) noted that in studies asking about initiation of the
incident, women report initiating aggression more often
than men. This finding does not support the idea that the
CTS only records self-defensive acts by women.
Another hypothesis for explaining gender symmetry is
Johnson’s (2005) typology of violence. Rather than argue in
support of the feminist or family violence perspective,
Johnson pointed out that the two groups are studying
different phenomena. Feminist researchers, in their inter-
views with shelter victims and assessments of emergency
room data, are studying what Johnson called intimate
terrorism. This type of violence is rooted in patriarchal
traditions of male dominance and gender inequality, and
occurs in relationships characterized by a history of
coercive control. It involves the systematic use of various
other control tactics, including economic subordination,
threats, and social isolation. Terms such as “beating” and
“battery” are used to describe this type of violence.
Family violence researchers, in their community-based
surveys, are capturing what Johnson (2005) termed situa-
tional couple violence. This type of violence is less severe,
and does not stem from patriarchal ideologies or control
motives. Instead, it occurs in conflict situations (often
mutual) that may “get out of hand” (Johnson 2005). Despite
their differences in theory, methodology, and findings, the
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feminist and family violence perspectives do have in
common their perception of family violence as a unique
type of violence with causes and consequences distinct
from violence between unrelated individuals.
The “General” Violence Perspective
Recently, a third perspective on the debate has emerged.
Felson (2002; Felson and Cares 2005) proposed a “violence
perspective” which argues that violence between intimates
and family members does not differ systematically from
violence occurring outside of families and intimate relation-
ships (to avoid confusion with the term “family violence
perspective,” I refer to this as the “general violence
perspective”). Gender differences in violence between
intimates reflect more general sex differences in violent
behavior and victimization. If men are more often the
perpetrators of intimate partner violence and more likely to
produce injuries it is because men are more often the
perpetrator of any violence and produce injuries because
they tend to be physically stronger (Felson 1996).
In an analysis of community-based survey data and data
from a sample of ex-offenders, Felson et al. (2003) tested
assumptions of both family violence and feminist perspec-
tives. In accordance with the family violence perspective,
they hypothesized that verbal altercations would lead to
physical aggression more often in incidents between family
members than incidents between unrelated people, because
society is more tolerant of violence against family members
than of other forms of violence. In accordance with the
feminist perspective, they hypothesized that men would be
violent towards their wives during verbal altercations at a
particularly high frequency. Their analyses revealed that
men were more inhibited about being violent toward an
intimate partner than a stranger. Women, however, were just
as likely to use violence toward an intimate as they were
toward a stranger. An incident-based analysis also found
that physical aggression was most situational between
strangers, while verbal aggression was most situational
between intimates, leading the researchers to surmise that
family violence, relative to violence in general, is rather
infrequent (Felson et al. 2003).
Using data from the National Violence Against Women
Survey, which measured IPV with the Conflict Tactics
Scale, Felson and Cares (2005) examined whether gender
differences in partner violence reflect gender differences in
any type of violence. Their analysis included measures of
victim/offender relationship, assault frequency, victim pre-
cipitation, severity of injury, and victim fear. Analyses
revealed that men perpetrated a greater number of violent
incidents overall, and women were more likely to be
injured in general, but this did not depend on the offender’s
gender or victim/offender relationship. Their results also
186
indicated that women were no more or less likely to be
fearful of violence perpetrated by a partner than by some
other person. Additionally, violence by women was not
particularly likely to be victim precipitated. However,
contrary to expectations, men were no more likely than
women to produce serious injuries.
The Current Study
The current study attempts to expand upon the existing
literature by investigating hypotheses derived from the
feminist, family violence, and general violence perspectives
simultaneously in an agency-based dataset. The National
Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is a database of
crimes reported to the police, containing information on the
victim, offender, offense, and arrestee (if an arrest was
made). This is a particularly interesting dataset for studying
intimate partner and family violence because, compared to
the content of shelter based samples versus community
based samples, agency data quite possibly contain a mix of
intimate terrorism and (at least severe) situational couple
violence incidents (Johnson 2005).
The manner in which the feminist, family violence, and
general violence perspectives conceptualize the problem of
intimate partner violence can be analyzed in terms of a
series of research questions about the nature of intimate
partner violence. Three specific research questions are
presented, followed by a series of expectations regarding
the relationship of interest, derived from each perspective.
These research questions are organized within the context
of violent acts (e.g., frequency of violence) and consequen-
ces (e.g., injury), as feminist and family violence scholars
are divided over which of the two is the more appropriate
unit of study.
Research Questions
Intimate Partner Acts of Violence
A key issue for all three perspectives concerns identifica-
tion of the most likely victims of intimate partner violence.
According to the feminist perspective (FP), intimate partner
violence is predominately an issue of male violence against
women. In contrast, the family violence perspective (FVP)
describes the family as a context particularly vulnerable to
violence between members, and suggests that men and
women are equally likely to experience violence from an
intimate partner. The general violence perspective (GVP)
argues that gender differences in intimate partner violence
reflect gender differences in victimization and offending in
general (e.g., men tend to be stronger and prone to use
J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193
violence against anyone) (Felson 1996; Felson et al. 2003),
and as such women would be more likely than men to
experience violence from an intimate. To assess these
perspectives, the current analysis first assessed:
Research Question 1: Who is more likely to experience
violence from an intimate partner?
– FP Hypothesis: Women are more likely than men
to experience violence from intimate partner.
– FVP Hypothesis: Women are no more or less likely
than men to experience violence from an intimate
partner.
– GVP Hypothesis: Women are more likely than men
to experience violence from an intimate partner.
The feminist and general violence perspectives have
similar expectations regarding victim gender in incidents of
intimate partner violence. However, they differ in terms of
their conceptualization of how intimate partner violence
compares to other types of violence (within and outside the
family). The feminist perspective highlights violence between
intimates as qualitatively distinct from all other types of
violence, and suggests that women are most at risk of being
victimized by an intimate. The general violence perspective
argues that violence within the family is not qualitatively
different from violence outside the family, and suggests that
individuals are actually inhibited against perpetrating vio-
lence toward intimates or family members and that men and
women are more likely to experience violence outside the
family. The next research question examined:
Research Question 2: What is the most likely victim-
offender relationship in violent
incidents?
– FP Hypothesis: Women are more likely to experi-
ence violence from an intimate partner than any
other perpetrators, within or outside the family.
– FVP Hypothesis: Women and men are both more
likely to experience violence from intimate part-
ners and other family members compared to
perpetrators outside the family.
– GVP Hypothesis: Women and men are both more
likely to experience violence from individuals
outside the family compared to intimate partner
and other family member perpetrators.
Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence
Feminist researchers view violence by men as more
consequential because women are injured more severely
than are men who are victimized by women; however, the
family violence perspective suggests that men and women
are equally likely to experience minor injuries from
J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193
intimate partners and other family members. The general
violence perspective argues that the risk of injury is not
specific to intimate relationships, but rather, as noted above,
men produce injuries more often because they tend to be
physically stronger. If gender differences in injury are due
to sex differences in size and strength, the general violence
perspective also suggests that the use of a weapon during
the incident may neutralize gender differences in injury.
Therefore, the final research question asked:
Research Question 3: How does the likelihood and severity
of injury differ by gender and victim-
offender relationship?
– FP Hypothesis: Women are more likely than men
to experience minor and severe injury by an
intimate partner.
– FVP Hypothesis: (a) There is no gender difference
in the odds of experiencing minor injury from an
intimate partner, but (b) women are more likely to
experience severe injuries.
– GVP Hypothesis: (a) Women are more likely to be
injured than men, irrespective of victim-offender
relationship.
Methods
Data and Sample
I used data from the National Incident Based Reporting
System (NIBRS) from the year 2006 to examine victim
identity, prevalence of intimate partner and family violence
in the context of other types of violence, and the extent of
injury experienced by victims of intimate partner violence.
NIBRS is an incident-based reporting system of crimes
known to the police among participating law enforcement
agencies. It was developed after a 1982 review of the
Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) led to a 5-year redesign
effort by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI to
provide more comprehensive and detailed crime statistics
(Stolzenberg and D’Alessio 2008). Under the UCR pro-
gram, law enforcement agencies report monthly aggregate
numbers of incidents by offense type. In contrast, agencies
participating in NIBRS provide individual records for each
crime reported to police. Agency participation is voluntary,
and law enforcement officers collect a variety of informa-
tion about each incident, such as the type of offense,
offender and victim characteristics (e.g., age, race, gender,
relationship, use of substances at time of incident), property
value, and arrestee characteristics (e.g., age, race, gender).
NIBRS data consist of six main segments, any of which
can serve as the unit of analysis: administrative (i.e.,
agency), offense, offender, property, victim, and arrestee.
187
For this analysis, the primary unit of analysis was the
victim, since the research questions and hypotheses were
concerned with victim experiences. Data segments from the
year 2006 were downloaded from the National Archives of
Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), constructed individually,
then merged. NIBRS data for 2006 contains 5,334,322
victims. Up to 999 victims can be recorded within a single
incident, although the vast majority of incidents involve no
more than 3 victims, and NACJD recommends using this
number as a cutoff in the initial data file construction. Of all
victims, 83.97% (n=4,479,147) were the only victim
involved in the incident, and 91.76% of those victims were
victimized by a single perpetrator. Therefore, the analysis
sample was limited to victims in incidents involving one
victim and one offender, as recommended by Buzawa and
Hotaling (2006). Because the focus of the current analysis
was violent victimization, the data file was further subset to
victimizations involving a violent personal offense (e.g.,
homicide, assault, kidnapping, robbery, sexual offense) and
victimizations where the victim-offender relationship was
known. Victims under the age of 18 were excluded to avoid
analyzing cases of child abuse, as were same-sex intimate
partners (who comprised less than 0.5% of the sample)
resulting in a final sample size of 604,614. The data are
therefore comprised of victimizations between same—and
opposite-sex family members, acquaintances, and strangers,
and opposite-sex intimate partners.
Because of the very large sample size, preliminary analyses
showed all coefficients significant at p<0.0001; however, for
several parameters, the exponentiated estimates were close to
1, indicating effects that were not particularly meaningful,
but rather being driven by the sample size. Therefore, in
order to best assess the influence of the independent
variables on the outcomes of interest, the analyses were
based on a random 2% sample of the full dataset, generated
using the SAS® System’s PROC SURVEYSELECT. This
sample of 12,092 victims should provide a more rigorous test
of the proposed hypotheses. The findings based on this 2%
random sample were directionally consistent with those
obtained from analyses on the full sample of 604,614 victims
Measures
Dependent Variables
Each of the three research questions analyzed slightly
different dependent variables. For Research Question 1,
victimization by an intimate partner was a dummy variable
coded 1 if the perpetrator was a spouse, common-law
spouse, ex-spouse, or boyfriend/girlfriend; all other perpe-
trators were coded 0. Research Question 2 disaggregated
the victim-offender relationship further, which was mea-
sured by a single variable with the following categories:
188
victimization by another family member (the perpetrator
was a parent, sibling, child, grandparent, grandchild, in-law,
stepparent, stepchild, stepsibling, or other family member);
victimization by other known individuals (the perpetrator
was an acquaintance, friend, neighbor, employer, employee,
or other known persons); and victimization by a stranger;
victimization by an intimate partner served as the reference
category. Research Question 3 examined victim injury.
Injury in NIBRS is recorded as no injury, apparent minor
injury, apparent broken bones, other major injury, possible
internal injury, loss of teeth, severe laceration, or uncon-
sciousness. These categories were collapsed into a single
variable with the following categories: no injury (reference
category), minor injury, and major injury.
Independent Variables
Victim and incident characteristics Victim gender was
measured by a dummy variable for female. NIBRS records
race as white, black, American Indian/Alaskan Native,
Asian/Pacific-Islander, and unknown. Hispanic ethnicity is
collected, but only for the victim. Because 67.23% of the
victims were white, victim race was measured by a dummy
variable for nonwhite, with white as the reference category
(30.11% of victims were black). Victim age, a continuous
variable ranging from 18 to 99 (NIBRS truncates age at
99), was centered in the multivariate analyses. If a weapon
was used in the incident, a variety of weapon types may be
recorded, including, but not limited to, firearms, knives,
and blunt objects. NIBRS also records if a physical body
part was used in the incident (e.g., hands, feet, teeth, etc.)
Weapon involvement was measured by a dummy variable
coded 1 for any type of weapon except physical body parts.
Twenty percent of cases were missing information on
weapon involvement and victim injury; however, 99% of
these cases involved the offense intimidation, which, by
UCR definitions (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2004)
involves neither victim injury nor a weapon. I therefore
coded these cases as involving no weapon and no injury to
the victim.
Area characteristics Since participation in NIBRS is volun-
tary and the recording of all incidents presents a greater
burden for larger law enforcement agencies, those agencies
that do participate tend to be smaller (Addington and
Rennison 2008). I therefore included a measure of popula-
tion size (obtained from the 2000 Census) to control for
underreporting by agencies in larger cities. It was measured
as the current population for the agency or the population of
the portion of the agency located within the county. Because
it was skewed (the standard deviation was larger than its
mean), I collapsed population into quartiles, coded 0–3, in
order to assign a meaningful zero to this covariate.
J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193
Analytic Strategy
Frequency distributions and chi-square analyses provided an
initial descriptive portrait of the prevalence of intimate partner
violence, and differences by gender. Binary logistic regression
was used to test Research Question 1: Who is more likely to
experience violence from an intimate partner? Research
Question 2 asked: What is the most likely victim-offender
relationship in violent incidents? A point of contention among
the feminist, family violence, and general violence perspec-
tives concerns the relative significance of intimate partner
violence compared to other types of violence within and
outside the family. Therefore, using a multinomial logistic
regression, victimization by an intimate was compared to
victimization by another family member, victimization by
another known person, and victimization by a stranger.
Multinomial logistic regression was also used to test Research
Question 3: How does the likelihood and severity of injury
differ by gender and victim-offender relationship? Here, nested
models estimate the effects of gender and intimate partner
victimization on the odds of minor and major injury compared
to no injury. To test the effect of intimate partner victimization
on odds of injury, I included the dummy variable victimized by
intimate used as the dependent variable in the model testing
Research Question 1. An interaction term for female victim X
victimized by intimate was included to test whether the effect
of victimization by an intimate partner differs by victim
gender.
Results
Sample Descriptives
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics from the sample of
violent personal victimizations reported in the 2006
National Incident Based Reporting System. The majority
of victimizations occurred between intimate partners,
comprising 43% of the sample, although this is much more
frequent among female victims compared to male victims
(54% vs. 22%, respectively). The family violence perspec-
tive theorizes that violence between other family members
occurs at a similar frequency as violence between intimates,
but only 13% of victimizations involved violence between
family members; however, there was no difference in the
proportion of males and females who were victimized by a
family member, which is consistent with the family
violence perspective. Violence by strangers was the least
common to be reported, although it occurred among a
greater proportion of male compared to female victims
(18% vs. 5%, respectively).
The majority of all victims (57%) were not injured
during the incident, and, interestingly, slightly more males
J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193 189

Table 1 Descriptive character-

istics of victim sample Full sample Female victims Male victims pa
%/Mean (SD) %/Mean (SD) %/Mean (SD)

Victim-offender relationship
Victimized by intimate partner 43.22 53.78 21.67 <0.0001
Victimized by other family member 12.70 12.36 13.40 0.1080
Victimized by other known person 34.95 28.89 47.31 <0.0001
Victimized by stranger 9.13 4.97 17.62 <0.0001
Injury
No injury 56.51 57.31 54.88 0.0113
Minor injury 40.15 40.76 38.91 0.0521
Major injury 3.18 1.84 5.93 <0.0001
Injury information missing 0.16 0.10 0.28 0.0203
Victim-offender characteristics
Female victim 67.10 – – –
Male victim 32.90 – – –
Female offender 22.50 16.77 34.19 <0.0001
Male offender 77.50 83.23 65.81 <0.0001
Victim race
White 67.73 65.43 72.42 <0.0001
Nonwhite 30.81 33.21 25.92 <0.0001
Race missing 1.46 1.36 1.66 0.1905
Victim age 34.04 (12.20) 33.01 (11.68) 36.13 (12.97) <0.0001
Incident characteristics
Weapon used against victim
No Weapon 27.31 27.66 26.60 0.2192
Physical weapon (e.g., gun, knife) 12.88 8.82 21.17 <0.0001
a
Gender differences on contin- Personal “weapon” (e.g., hands, feet) 58.59 62.40 50.83 <0.0001
uous variables (age) assessed via Weapon information missing 1.22 1.12 1.41 0.1772
t-tests; all other comparisons use Number of cases 12,092
chi-square test

than females were injured. Major injury was rare (3%) in variable for victimization by an intimate partner was
the full sample, and particularly for female victims (2%). regressed on victim gender, along with controls for victim
Just over two thirds of the victims were female (67%) and age, victim race, and population quartile. The odds of being
white (68%), and almost a quarter of all victimizations were victimized by an intimate partner, compared to being
perpetrated by females (23%). While females were more victimized by some other person (known or unknown)
often victimized by someone of the opposite sex (83%), were 4.067 times greater for females than males [exp
males were more often victimized by other males (66%). (1.403)=4.067], net of the other covariates. Taking the
Regarding weapon use during the incident, over half of all
victims were hit, kicked, etc. by any perpetrator. This Table 2 Binary logistic regression for victimization by an intimate
occurred more frequently for female victims. Weapons such partner, compared to victimization by any other person (n=12,092)
as knives, guns, or blunt objects were used in approxi-
β (SE)
mately 13% of victimizations, more often against male
victims. This is not surprising, given that male victims are Intercept −1.176*** (0.046)
most often victimized by other males, and males are more Female victim 1.403*** (0.045)
apt than females to use weapons. Victim agea −0.016*** (0.002)
Non-white victim 0.022 (0.044)
Multivariate Analyses Population quartile −0.065*** (0.018)
Model χ2 1290.491***
Research Question 1 asked if women were more likely than
a
men to experience intimate partner violence. Table 2 Indicates variable was mean centered
presents a binary logistic regression model where a dummy *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001
190
inverse of this, we can see that male victims’ odds of
experiencing violence from intimates compared to violence
from others was approximately 75% lower than the odds
for female victims [100*(exp(−1.403)−1)].
To further explore victims’ experiences with intimate
partner violence, compared to violence by other perpetra-
tors, the analyses for Research Question 2 utilized a
multinomial logistic regression model, comparing the odds
of experiencing victimization from a family member, other
known person, or stranger to the odds of experiencing
intimate partner violence. As shown in Table 3, female
victims were significantly less likely than male victims to
experience violence from family members. More specifi-
cally, female victims’ odds of experiencing violence from
other family members, instead of intimates, were approx-
imately 59% lower than the odds for males. Similar patterns
exist across the contrasts for other known persons and
strangers. Females were particularly less likely than males
to experience stranger violence compared to intimate
partner violence (female victims’ odds were 89% lower
than the odds for male victims).
Intimate partner violence appeared to be the most
prevalent type of violence experienced by female victims,
at least compared to male victims. Table 2 illustrates that
females were more likely than males to experience intimate
partner violence over any other type of violence, and
Table 3 indicates that females were less likely than males to
experience violence from other family members, other
known individuals, or strangers, compared to violence from
intimates. Also, although the majority of female victims
experienced violence from either an intimate or other
family member (66%), only 35% of males experienced
violence from intimates or family members, compared to
47% of male victims who experienced violence from other
known persons. Re-estimating the model from Table 3 but
replacing female victim with a dummy for male victim
indicated that the odds of violence from other known
persons, compared to intimates, was about four times
higher for males than females, and the odds of stranger
violence approximately eight times higher for males.
In addition to differences in expectations about the
prevalence of intimate partner violence (e.g., violent “acts”)
Table 3 Multinomial logistic
regressions for odds of victimiza- Other family member
tion by another family member, β (SE)
other known person, or stranger,
compared to victimization by an Intercept
intimate partner (n=12,092) Female victim
Victim agea
a
Indicates variable was mean Non-white victim
centered Population quartile
†
p<0.10, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, Model χ2 1759.273***
***p<0.001
J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193
the feminist, family violence, and general violence per-
spectives differ in their expectations regarding the con-
sequences of intimate partner and other types of violence.
These “consequences” are frequently discussed in terms of
victim injury. Multinomial logistic regression models
estimating the effects of victim gender and intimate partner
victimization on the odds of minor and major injury among
all victims are presented in Table 4. These models also
controlled for weapon use during the incident (since this is
particularly likely to influence injury), victim age and race,
and population.
Model 1A in Table 4 tests for gender differences in the
odds of experiencing minor injury. Contrary to the expect-
ations of the feminist and general violence perspective
hypotheses, female victims were no more or less likely to
experience minor injury than were males. However, after
controlling for victimization by an intimate partner (Model
2A), females were actually less likely than males to sustain
minor injuries. Net of the covariates, female victims’ odds
of minor injury were approximately 20% lower than the
odds of minor injury for males [100*(exp(−0.224)−1)].
Victims of intimate partners, however, had a higher odds of
minor injury than victims of other types of offenders. The
odds of minor injury were almost two times greater
for victims of intimate partners compared to other types
of victims. Model 3A includes the interaction term female
victim X victimized by intimate partner, which was
significant, indicating that the effect of victimization by
an intimate on the odds of minor injury varied by victim
gender. In Model 3A, net of the covariates, the effect of
being victimized by an intimate on the log odds of minor
injury, in general, is 0.521 + 0.197Female victim, which
implies an odds of minor injury for females of 2.050 (exp
[0.718]). The odds of minor injury for males victimized by
an intimate partner was 1.684 (exp[0.521]). In general,
being victimized by an intimate partner is associated with a
higher odds of minor injury for females compared to males.
Regarding major injury, the odds of major injury for
female victims were 57% lower than the odds for male
victims (Table 4, Model 1B). Although victims of intimate
partners had a higher odds of experiencing minor injury,
they were no more or less likely to experience major injury
Other known person Stranger
β (SE) β (SE)
−0.637*** (0.069) 0.704*** (0.050) −0.520*** (0.072)
−0.887*** (0.067) −1.391*** (0.049) −2.167*** (0.074)
0.067*** (0.002) 0.008*** (0.002) 0.013*** (0.003)
0.024 (0.067) 0.060 (0.048) −0.506*** (0.084)
0.018 (0.028) 0.038 (0.020)† 0.272*** (0.033)
J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193 191

Table 4 Multinomial logistic regressions for odds of minor and major injury, compared to no injury (n=12,073)

Minor injury vs. no injury Major injury vs. no injury

Model 1A Model 2A Model 3A Model 1B Model 2B Model 3B

β (SE) β (SE) β (SE) β (SE) β (SE) β (SE)

Intercept −0.359*** (0.043) −0.534*** (0.045) −0.502*** (0.047) −3.146*** (0.123) −3.181*** (0.126) −3.113*** (0.126)
Female victim −0.014 (0.041) −0.224*** (0.044) −0.284*** (0.053) −0.839*** (0.114) −0.883*** (0.120) −1.143*** (0.151)
Victimized by intimate – 0.670*** (0.041) 0.521*** (0.079) – 0.151 (0.125) −0.343† (0.208)
partner
Female victim*victimized – – 0.197* (0.092) – – 0.839** (0.269)
by intimate partner
Victim agea −0.010*** (0.002) −0.008*** (0.002) −0.008*** (0.002) −0.014** (0.005) −0.013** (0.005) −0.013** (0.005)
Non-white victim −0.100* (0.043) −0.104* (0.043) −0.101* (0.043) 0.202† (0.118) 0.205† (0.118) 0.222† (0.119)
†
Weapon 0.102 (0.060) 0.134* (0.061) 0.134* (0.061) 2.344*** (0.115) 2.350*** (0.115) 2.353*** (0.116)
Population quartile 0.029† (0.018) 0.039* (0.018) 0.039* (0.018) −0.062 (0.051) −0.059* (0.051) −0.057 (0.051)
Model χ2 618.315 897.733 910.539 618.315 897.733 910.539

Victims missing information on injury were excluded from analysis

a
Indicates variable was mean centered
†
p<0.10, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001

than victims of other offenders (Model 2B). However, the
interaction between female victim and intimate partner
victimization was significant, indicating that the effect of
intimate partner victimization on the odds of major injury
varied by gender. In Model 3B, net of the covariates, the
effect of intimate partner victimization on the log odds of
major injury is −0.343 + 0.839Female victim, resulting in
an odds of major injury for females of 1.642 (exp[0.496]).
The odds of major injury for males victimized by an
intimate partner was 0.710 (exp[−0.343]); however, this
effect was not significant. Victimization by an intimate
partner was positively associated with major injury for
female victims, but was not significantly associated with
the odds of major injury for male victims.
Discussion
The current study proposed and tested a series of competing
hypotheses about intimate partner violence in the National
Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), a dataset of
criminal incidents known to the police. Three research
questions were presented concerning victim identity,
victim-offender relationships, and victim injury. Research
Question 1 asked if there were gender differences in the
odds of experiencing violence from intimates, with hypoth-
eses derived from the feminist (FP) and general violence
perspective (GVP) both suggesting that women would be
more likely than men to be the victim of an intimate; the
family violence (FVP) hypothesis suggested there would be
no gender difference. The analyses were consistent with the
feminist and general violence perspectives. Female victims
had over four times greater odds than males of experiencing
violence from an intimate partner. Research Question 2
examined the most frequent victim-offender relationship.
Again, the analyses matched the expectations of the FP
hypothesis: women were more likely to experience violence
from an intimate partner than from another family member,
an acquaintance, or a stranger. The FVP hypothesis that
women and men would be more likely to experience
violence from intimates or other family members than from
other perpetrators was not supported. The GVP hypothesis
suggested that violence was more likely to be perpetrated
by offenders outside the family. The analyses supported this
expectation, but only for men. When women were the
victims of violence, the perpetrator was most often an
intimate partner.
Research Question 3 asked how the likelihood and
severity of injury differs by gender and victim-offender
relationship. The hypothesis derived from family violence
perspective suggested that men and women were equally
likely to experience minor injury, but that women were
more likely to experience major injury. The results initially
appeared to support this, given the lack of significance for
the effect of female victim on the odds of minor injury;
however, once the victim-offender relationship was con-
trolled for and its effect allowed to vary by victim gender,
female victims of intimate partners were more likely to
experience minor injury than males victimized by intimates.
The hypotheses based on the general violence and feminist
perspectives suggested that women were more likely than
men to be injured and more likely than men to be injured
when victimized by an intimate partner, respectively. The
analyses appeared consistent with the feminist perspective
192
hypothesis and partially supported the general violence
hypothesis, since the feminist perspective hypothesis had
specific relational expectations regarding injury (e.g.,
female victims of intimate partners will experience injury),
while the general violence perspective hypothesized sex
differences with regards to injury (e.g., females in general
will experience injury).
Overall, the findings appear most consistent with the
expectations of the hypotheses based on the feminist
perspective, at least in terms of the prevalence of acts and
the severity (injury) of their consequences. Also, the
finding that intimate partner victims were more likely to
experience minor injury than other victims is consistent
with feminist theory’s ideas about the uniqueness of
violence between intimates relative to other types of
violence. However, there was at least partial support for
some expectations of the general violence hypotheses.
More specifically, women were more likely than men to
be victimized by an intimate partner, and when women
were victimized, they were more likely to be victimized by
an intimate partner compared to any other type of offender.
Regarding injury, victimization by an intimate partner was
associated with a higher odds of injury for women than
men. The hypotheses derived from the family violence
perspective received the least support, as men and women
were not equally likely to experience violence from an
intimate or other family member, and there were gender
differences in the odds of experiencing injury.
There are two caveats worth noting. First, although the
majority of incidents in the current sample were perpetrated
by intimate partners and the minority of incidents by
strangers, there is no way, in the given dataset, to account
for differential opportunity across potential perpetrators.
That is, the high proportion of intimate partner perpetration
may be influenced by increased exposure between intimates
relative to exposure between strangers. Second, it is not
possible to know from these data if differences in outcomes
among IPV incidents reflect gender differences in motive
(as the FP would suggest) or sex differences in size and
strength of offenders (as the GVP would suggest). For
example, prior studies have shown that similar motives,
denials, minimizations, and attributions of blame exist
between male and female perpetrators of IPV (George
1994; Henning et al. 2006). Also, although the majority of
female victims were victimized by an intimate partner, a
sizable percentage (29%) was victimized by some other
known person.
Limitations
While the current study provides important information on
intimate partner violence, some limitations must be noted.
First, although these data consisted of criminal incidents
J Fam Viol (2010) 25:183–193
reported in over 30 states, participation in NIBRS is
voluntary; thus these data are not nationally representative.
Also, because these are incidents reported to police, the
findings are not generalizable to all incidents of intimate
partner violence. Since incident reports are not generated
until the crime is reported to the police, it is not possible to
know if the violence was retaliatory in nature, or if the
individuals were mutually combative. Additionally, it is
very plausible that violence perpetrated against males by
their female intimate partners is underreported in these data.
Also, one may argue that because the violence was serious
enough to draw police attention, police agency-based data
are biased toward the most severe form of IPV, intimate
terrorism. However, given the use of control motives by
intimate terrorists (necessary to distinguish the violence as
intimate terrorism) and victim fearfulness, it seems some-
what unlikely that victims of intimate terrorism would notify
the police. Unfortunately, NIBRS does not record how the
incident came to police attention, so we can only speculate
on the types of incidents contained within these data.
Notwithstanding these limitations, these findings are a
contribution to the literature because much of the scholar-
ship on intimate partner violence subscribing to feminist
perspectives utilizes data from shelters, emergency rooms,
batterer intervention programs, or domestic violence courts.
Research based on the family violence perspective most
often utilizes self-report survey data. This study provides a
large-scale analysis of law enforcement agency-based data,
consisting of violent incidents reported to the police. It is
quite possible that these data capture violent incidents of
varying severity. While more than half of the female
victims in the current analysis were victimized by an
intimate partner, this study highlights that almost one
quarter of male victims experienced victimization at the
hands of an intimate. Regardless of whether we are
examining incidents of intimate terrorism or situational
couple violence, the current study illustrates that violence
between intimate partners is dangerous and damaging to
both women and men.
Acknowledgement Special thanks are extended to Alfred DeMaris
and David F. Warner, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for
comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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