DIFFERENTIAL PATTERNS OF PARTNER-TO-WOMAN VIOLENCE - A COMPARISON OF SAMPLES OF COMMUNITY, ALCOHOL-ABUSING, AND BATTERED WOMEN

This paper compared a sample of women in treatment for alcoholism (N = 45) with a randomly selected sample of women from the local community (N = 40), and a sample of women receiving services for victimization by severe partner violence (N = 38). Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) item s were dichotomized into low frequency of partner violence (twice per year or less) and high frequency of violence (once per month or more), and then summed to yield separate low frequency and high frequency sc ores for each CTS subscale. Results showed that at the high frequency level, battered women reported the highest scores on each subscale, al coholic women the second highest, and the community sample of women re ported the lowest level of violence. A multiple regression analysis re vealed that being in the alcoholic sample significantly predicted high frequency negative verbal interaction and moderate violence, controll ing for presence of a partner with alcohol-related problems and demogr aphic differences among the samples.