The present study examined the psychological functioning of children w
ho came from backgrounds of domestic violence. Phase I provided a desc
riptive analysis of the emotional and behavioural problems, social com
petence, reading skills, anxiety levels, and conflict response styles
of 79 children, aged 6 to 12 years, who had previously lived in domest
ically violent situations. Phase II compared the scores of 22 of these
children with the scores of 22 children who had no history of domesti
c violence, and who were matched to the former group on the basis of a
ge, sex, reading skills, and socioeconomic status. The results for Pha
se I indicated that between 52% and 63% of the domestic violence group
showed borderline to severe levels of behaviour problems; 52% had bel
ow-average adaptive behaviour skills; and over 43% had reading ages wh
ich were more than one year below their chronological ages. Moderately
high to high levels of anxiety were evident in only 15% of children,
and significantly more assertive responses and fewer aggressive respon
ses were chosen to resolve hypothetical conflict situations. Except fo
r the latter measure, there were no gender differences in performance.
The effects of witnessing, and being directly involved in, domestic v
iolence were also analysed. Whether or not a child witnessed parental
violence did not affect any of the outcome measures for children, but
direct abuse of the child by the parent affected their behavioural pro
blems, adaptive behaviour and aggressive responses to conflict. Phase
II results showed significant differences between the domestic violenc
e and matched control samples in terms of their behaviour problems, so
cial competence, and tendency to choose aggressive responses, but no d
ifferences in anxiety levels. The variables which were significantly r
elated to domestic violence or control group membership were behaviour
problems, of an internalising type, and aggressive conflict response
tendencies.