Conflict Tactics Scale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS) is a widely used method of identifying intimate partners maltreatment, with a version for the identifying of child maltreatment. It has been used in national surveys on the prevalence of family violence in the USA and other countries. These include the two National Family Violence Surveys (Straus & Gelles, 1990), the National Violence Against Women Survey (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000), and the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. By 2005 about 600 research papers and at least ten books reporting results based on the CTS were published.

Langhinrichsen-Rohling (2005) in The Journal of Interpersonal Violence (20th anniversary commemorative issue) states:

In 1979. Straus created a measure, the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) which lit a fire to the domestic violence field. The CTS was revolutionary because it allowed researchers to quantitatively study events that had often been ignored culturally and typically took place in private.

The CTS2, for couples has scales to measure victimization and perpetration of three tactics that are often used in conflicts between dating and marital partners:

physical assault
psychological aggression
negotiation

along with scales to measure injury and sexual coercion of and by a partner.

The CTSPC (parent-child relationships) has scales to measure;

physical assault (with subscales for corporal punishment and physical abuse)
psychological aggression
non-violent discipline techniques

with supplementary questions on neglect, sexual abuse, and discipline in the past week.

The scales are based on the premise that conflict is an inevitable and valuable aspect of all human association with the use of coercion, including force and violence as a tactic for resolving conflicts being harmful.

The CTS focuses on "conflict tactics" - the method used to advance one's own interest.

The CTS is oriented towards behaviours, not attitudes and seeks to measures the behavior of both the respondent and their partner.

Administration of the CTS can be by in-person interview, telephone interview, self-administered questionnaire, and computer-administered questionnaire.

1 Controversy
2 Revised Conflict Tactics Scale
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Controversy

The designers of the CTS see the most frequent and severe criticism of the CTS reflecting ideological differences rather than empirical evidence.

… many feminist scholars reject the CTS because studies using this instrument find that about the same percentage of women as men assault their partners. This contradicts the feminist theory that partner violence is almost exclusively committed by men as a means to dominate women, and is therefore prima facie evidence that the CTS is not valid. [1]

However, critics who question the method contend that whatever one's ideology, basic knowledge of statistics and research methods highlight the invalidity of certain conclusions being drawn from the CTS. They claim raw-numbers and instances of violence do not provide information about the context in which they occur (including the initiation, intention, history, or pattern of violence) and therefore may misrepresent the characteristics of violence between partners. CTS does not measure economic abuse, manipulation involving children, isolation, or intimidation - all common measures of violence from a victim-advocacy perspective [2]. These elements are typically difficult to measure but nevertheless important to understanding violence in our society. Moreover, response bias may occur and CTS does not factor in the cases of nonrespondents.

[edit] Revised Conflict Tactics Scale

The Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2) ( Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, and Sugarman, 1996) doubled the number of items, it was expanded to measure psychological and sexual abuse, in addition to physical attacks in an intimate relationship and included a variety of conflict responses.

[edit] References

Langhinrichsen-Rohling, J. (2005). Top 10 greatest "hits" important findings and future directions for intimate partner violence research. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20(1), 108-118.
Straus, M. A., & Gelles, R. J. (1990). Physical violence in American families: Risk factors and adaptations to violence in 8,145 families. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications.
Straus, M.A., Hamby, S.L., Boney-McCoy, S., Sugarman, D.B. (1996). The revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2): development and preliminary psychometric data. Journal of Family Issues, 17(3): 283-316.
Tjaden, P., & Thoennes, N. (2000). Full report of the prevalence, incidence, and consequences of violence against women: Findings from the national violence against women survey (No. NCJ 183781). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.