Interspousal Aggression in Law Enforcement Families: a Preliminary Investigation
"Every bit the National Centre for Women and Policing noted in a heavily footnoted information sheet, 'Ii studies have found that at least forty percentage of police officer families feel domestic violence, in contrast to x percent of families in the full general population.'" — Conor Friedersdorf,The Atlantic,9/28/fourteen
The National Eye for Women and Policing website is currently down, but nosotros can use the Wayback Auto to run into what Friedersdorf is citing. The two studies cited by the Middle are:
- Johnson, L.B. (1991).On the front end lines: Constabulary stress and family well-existence. Hearing before the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families House of Representatives: 102 Congress Commencement Session May 20 (p. 32-48). Washington DC: Us Authorities Printing Part.
- Neidig, P.H., Russell, H.Eastward. & Seng, A.F. (1992). Interspousal assailment in law enforcement families: A preliminary investigation. Police Studies, Vol. 15 (ane), p. xxx-38.
Johnson source
The Johnson source is the testimony of Leanor Boulin Johnson who at the time was a professor in the Department of Family unit Studies at Arizona State University (she currently is emeritus at ASU). Johnson explains she surveyed 728 officers and 479 police spouses in "two East Declension police force departments (moderate to large in size)". She says the sample was drawn in 1983, and so presumably the survey was conducted in that twelvemonth. There is no information on response rates nor how officers were selected, nor how they were invited to participate. The twoscore% effigy is mentioned on page 42:
X percent of the spouses reported being physically driveling past their mates at to the lowest degree in one case; the same percentage claim that their children were physically abused. The officers were asked a less direct question, that is, if they had ever gotten out of control and behaved violently confronting their spouse and children in the last half dozen months. Nosotros did not define the type of violence. Thus, violence could take been interpreted as exact or physical threats or bodily physical abuse. Approximately, 40 percent said that in the last six months prior to the survey they had behaved violently towards their spouse or children. Given that 20-xxx percent of the spouses claimed that their mate frequently became verbally abusive towards them or their children, I suspect that a significant number of police officers divers tearing as both verbal and physical abuse.
Neidig et al Source
Like the Johnson study, the Neidig et al. study relies on survey self-reports of police officers. They surveyed 385 male officers, 40 female person officers, and 115 female person spouses who were manifestly attending in-service training sessions and law enforcement conferences "in a southwestern state" (presumably Arizona; Neidig'southward co-authors Harold Russell and Albert Seng'south institutional affiliation was listed as the Tuscon police force section).
To measure domestic violence, they used the "Modified Conflict Tactics Scale" which gives subjects a listing of 25 conflict behaviors and asks them to report the number of times they had engaged in each of them during the by year on a "7-signal scale ranging from 'never' to 'more than 20 times a year'", although in their analyses they plummet this into "never" versus "ever". They give examples of items constituting "small" and "severe" violence:
They present their findings in this tabular array.
I am a little unsure how to interpret it, but they say that the "reported perpetrator, either self, spouse, or both, of the violence is listed" so I call back this means that 28% of male officers report inflicting either "minor or severe" violence on their spouse and 33% study receiving modest or astringent violence from their wives; 33% of wives say they inflicted minor or astringent violence on their spouses, and 25% of police force wives say they take received small or severe violence. What is noteworthy is that both male person officers and wives' reports concur that wives are a little more likely to commit any violence than are the officers.
The NCWP factsheet alluded to a comparison with the general population; this apparently also came from the Neidig et al. paper which used 1985 survey information from the National Family Violence Resurvey. Neidig et al. do not talk almost how the survey measured domestic violence but looking at the user's guide (p. 56) suggests the two surveys used comparable items. Neidig et al.'due south tabulation comparing rates of domestic violence for law enforcement and noncombatant families uses the male police force officer's survey reports (not the survey reports of the law wives nor those of female officers). Equally Neidig et al. say, it looks like rates of astringent violence are pretty like for police enforcement and noncombatant families; the main difference appeares to be in rates of "minor" violence.
Wrap Up
I confess that when I started this statistical scavenger hunt, I was expecting eventually to notice this statistic was crap, but indeed there were two independent studies in the early 1990s showing that domestic violence is pretty common in police families. However, the Johnson statistic is simply referring to domestic violence committed by constabulary officers; the Neidig et al. statistic is referring to domestic violence committed by either police officers or their spouses–if we merely focus on police force officers in the Neidig et al. study the figure is 28% which is still pretty high.
I am non crazy that the Neidig et al. study appears to be using a convenience sample and that both studies are pretty vague on recruitment. On the other hand, I would expect that any sampling bias would run in the management of underestimating domestic violence. That is, officers who practise perpetuate domestic violence would be less probable to volunteer to take a survey measuring various forms of personal and professional person dysfunction.
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Source: https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-families-experience-domestic-violence/