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. To meet Wikipedias quality standards and make it easier to understand, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Negotiation is the process whereby interested parties resolve disputes, agree upon courses of action, bargain for individual or collective advantage, and/or attempt to craft outcomes which serve their mutual interests. ... Injury is damage or harm caused to the structure or function of the body caused by an outside agent or force, which may be physical or chemical. ... Coercion is the practice of compelling a person to act by employing threat of harm (usually physical force, sometimes other forms of harm). ...

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. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Discipline is any training intended to produce a specific character or pattern of behaviour, especially training that produces moral or mental development in a particular direction. ...

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.

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 factor in the context in which they occur and therefore do not amount to conclusive cases of mutual abuse. Moreover, response bias may occur and CTS does not factor in the cases of nonrespondents. Prima facie (PRY-muh-FAY-shee; -shuh) is a Latin expression meaning at first sight, used in common law jurisdictions to denote evidence that is sufficient, if not rebutted, to prove a particular proposition of fact. ...

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.

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.

See also

• Child abuse
• Domestic violence
• Spousal abuse

• Feminism
• Masculism and men's rights

Child abuse is the physical or psychological maltreatment of a child by an adult often synonymous with the term child maltreatment or the term child abuse and neglect. ... Domestic violence occurs when a family member, partner or ex-partner attempts to physically or psychologically dominate or harm the other. ... Spousal abuse is a specific form of domestic violence where physical or sexual abuse is perpetuated by one spouse upon another. ... Statue of Emmeline Pankhurst, a famous suffragette, in Victoria Tower Gardens next to the Houses of Parliament, Westminster. ... Masculism (also referred to as masculinism) is a term relating to a number of ideologies found in the streams of the mens movement that are either antifeminist or very critical of feminism. ... Mens rights is a stream in the mens movement. ...

External links

• The Conflict Tactics Scales CTS44
• Murray A. Straus
• Michael Flood, Claims about Husband Battering at XYonline an example of the response to the Conflict Tactics Scale