SELECTED
WORK ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Book
Johnson,
Michael P. (2008). A Typology of
Domestic Violence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent Resistance, and Situational
Couple Violence. Boston:
Northeastern University Press. Domestic violence, a serious and
far-reaching social problem, has generated two key debates among researchers.
The first debate is about gender and domestic violence. Some scholars argue
that domestic violence is primarily male-perpetrated, others that women are as
violent as men in intimate relationships. Johnson's response to this
debate--and the central theme of this book--is that there is more than one type
of intimate partner violence. Some studies address the type of violence that is
perpetrated primarily by men, while others are getting at the kind of violence
that women are involved in as well. Because there has been no theoretical
framework delineating types of domestic violence, researchers have easily
misread one another's studies. The second major debate involves how many women
are abused each year by their partners. Estimates range from two to six
million. Johnson's response once again comes from this book's central theme. If
there is more than one type of intimate partner violence, then the numbers
depend on what type you're talking about. Johnson argues that domestic violence
is not a unitary phenomenon. Instead, he delineates three major, dramatically
different, forms of partner violence: intimate terrorism, violent resistance,
and situational couple violence. He roots the conceptual distinctions among the
forms of violence in an analysis of the role of power and control in
relationship violence and shows that the failure to make these basic
distinctions among types of partner violence has produced a research literature
that is plagued by both overgeneralizations and ostensibly contradictory
findings. This volume begins the work of theorizing forms of domestic violence,
a crucial first step to a better understanding of these phenomena among
scholars, social scientists, policy makers, and service providers.
YouTube
Types of domestic violence: Research evidence. Presented at Third Nordic Conference on Barnet og Rusen. Sandefjord, Norway. September 2012. (about an hour) Radio Interview
Michael Johnson - Radio New Zealand (October 28, 2012)
Unpublished
Bibliographies
Johnson, Michael P. (2015). Bibliography of Empirical Papers Addressing the Typology. 6pp
Johnson, Michael P. (2015). Bibliography of Empirical Papers Addressing the Typology with Abstracts and Notes. 27pp Articles, Chapters, and Presentations
Johnson, Michael P. (2017).
A personal social history of a typology of intimate partner violence. Journal of Family
Theory and Review 9 (June), 150-164. This
article is a personal social narrative of the development of my control-based
typology of intimate partner violence (IPV). The influence of friends and
colleagues in all aspects of this process was so central and so pervasive that
it just did not make sense to me to make this a story only about myself. After
I tell the social story of the development of the first version and then later
versions of my thinking about types of IPV, I leave the personal realm and lay
out the implications of the typology for the question of the relationship
between gender and intimate partner violence. Finally, I briefly tie the gender
question to the general issues of inequality that have driven me throughout my
career.
Hardesty,
Jennifer L., Kimberly A. Crossman, Megan L. Haselschwerdt, Marcela Raffaelli, Brian G. Ogolsky, and
Michael P. Johnson. (2015).
Toward a standard approach to
operationalizing coercive control and classifying violence types. Journal of
Marriage and Family 77 (August), 833-843. Coercive control is central to distinguishing between
Johnson's (2008) 2 main types of intimate partner violence: (a) coercive
controlling violence and (b) situational couple violence. Approaches to
assessing coercive control, however, have been inconsistent. Using data from 2
projects involving divorcing mothers (N = 190), the authors compared common analytic
strategies for operationalizing coercive control and classifying types of
violence. The results establish advantages to measuring coercive control in
terms of frequency versus number of tactics, illustrate the use of both
hierarchical and k-means
clustering methods to identify patterns of coercive control and evaluate
clustering solutions, and offer a suggested cutoff for classifying violence
types in general samples of separated women using the Dominance–Isolation
subscale of the widely used Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory
(Tolman, 1992). Finally, the authors demonstrate associations between types of
violence and theoretically relevant variables, including frequency and severity
of violence, harassment and violence after separation, fear, and perceived
threat.
Johnson, Michael P. (2014). Les types de violence familiale. Pp. 15-31 in Maryse Rinfret-Raynor, Élisabeth Lesieux, Marie-Marthe Cousineau, Sonia Gauthier, and Elizabeth Harper (Eds.), Violences Envers les Femmes: Réalités Complexes et Nouveaux Enjeux dans un Monde en Transformation. Québec: Presses Universitaires de l’Université du Québec. (Final draft in English without paging: Distinguishing among types of intimate partner violence: Intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence. Pp. 15-31 in Maryse Rinfret-Raynor, Élisabeth Lesieux, Marie-Marthe Cousineau, Sonia Gauthier, and Elizabeth Harper (Eds.), Violence Against Women: Complex Realities and New Issues in a Changing World. Québec: Presses Universitaires de l’Université du Québec.)
Johnson, Michael P., Janel M. Leone, & Yili Xu. (2014). Intimate terrorism and situational couple violence in general surveys: Ex-spouses required. Violence Against Women 20 (February), 186-207. (Nominated by the journal's associate editors and editorial board for the 2014 Best Article Award.)
In this paper we argue that past efforts to
distinguish among types of intimate partner violence in survey data have
committed a critical error: using data on current spouses to develop
operationalizations of intimate terrorism and situational couple violence. We
use ex-spouse data from the National Violence Against Women survey to develop
new operationalizations. We then demonstrate that NVAW current spouse data
contain little intimate terrorism; we argue that this is likely to be the case
for all general surveys. In addition, the ex-spouse data confirm past findings
regarding a variety of differences between intimate terrorism and situational
couple violence, including those predicted by feminist theories.
Hardesty, Jennifer
L., Megan L. Haselschwerdt, and Michael P. Johnson. (2012). Domestic violence
and child custody. In Kathryn
Kuehnle and Leslie Drozd
(Eds.), Parenting
Plan Evaluations: Applied Research for the Family Court (pp.
442-475). New York: Oxford University Press. The purpose of this chapter is to
review empirical research that will inform the process of evaluating separating
parents in the context of DV. We
begin by introducing distinctions among types of DV, distinctions that are
important for understanding the relevant research and for evaluating the
implications of DV for custody decisions.
To help establish the relevance of DV to child custody, we provide a
summary of the effects of DV exposure on children. Then we review the research on parenting in the context of
DV. This growing body of research
provides insight into post-separation relationship dynamics and parenting
characteristics of victims and abusers.
The chapter concludes with the options available for parenting plans
that prioritize both safety and the long-term adjustment of parents and
children affected by DV.
Johnson, Michael P.
(2011). Gender and types of intimate partner violence: A response to an
anti-feminist literature review. Aggression and Violent Behavior 16
(July/August), 289-296. This article
presents a feminist perspective on domestic violence that is rooted in an
explication of the differences among three major types of intimate partner
violence (intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple
violence). Theory and research from this perspective is then reviewed to rebut
recent attacks on feminist scholarship and policy regarding intimate partner
violence.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2010). We haven’t reached post-feminism yet. Building Partnerships (Winter), 9. The Centre for
Research & Education on Violence against Women and Children, The University
of Western Ontario.
Johnson,
Michael P. (February, 2010). Types of domestic violence: Implications for
policy.
Handouts for the second of two Powerpoint
presentations for the practitioners’ workshop sponsored by the New Directions
Program of Catholic Family Service Ottawa. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Johnson,
Michael P. (February, 2010). Types of domestic violence: Research evidence.
Handouts for the first of two Powerpoint
presentations for the practitioners’ workshop sponsored by the New Directions
Program of Catholic Family Service Ottawa. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Johnson, Michael
P. (2010). Langhinrichsen-Rohling’s Confirmation of
the Feminist Analysis of Intimate Partner Violence: Comment on “Controversies
Involving Gender and Intimate Partner Violence in the United States.” Sex Roles, 62 (3-4),
212-219. This article makes
four major points in response to Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling’s
(2010) review of the intimate partner violence literature. First, the evidence
is clear that there is more than one type of intimate partner violence. Second,
the feminists are right. Gender is central to the analysis of intimate partner
violence, and the coercive controlling violence that most people associate with
the term “domestic violence” is perpetrated primarily by men against their
female partners. Third, different types of intimate partner violence have
different causes, different developmental trajectories, and different
consequences. They require different models to understand them. Finally, we
need more qualitative research focused on the least understood types of
intimate partner violence: violent resistance and situational couple violence. [Correction
Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Sex Roles (2010) 62:220.]
In “Langhinrichsen-Rohling’s Confirmation of the
Feminist Analysis of Intimate Partner Violence: Comment on ‘Controversies
Involving Gender and Intimate Partner Violence in the United States’” (Volume
62, Numbers 3/4, February 2010,DOI: 10.1007/s11199-009-9697-2) Langhinrichsen-Rohling’s name was erroneously misspelled in
the title, the abstract, and the conclusion. The correct spelling is Langhinrichsen-Rohling.
Johnson,
Michael P. (May, 2009). Where Do “Domestic Violence” Statistics Come From and
Why Do They Vary So Much? Paper presented at a workshop sponsored by the
Healthy Marriage Resource Center and the National Resource Center on Domestic
Violence: Towards a Common Understanding: Domestic Violence Typologies and
Implications for Healthy Marriage and Domestic Violence Programs. Warrenton,
Virginia. Available at the Healthy Marriage Resource Center Web site:
http://www.healthymarriageinfo.org/docs/DomesticViolenceStatistics.pdf. Domestic violence advocates and family
violence researchers often appear to contradict each other when they describe
and report on the extent and
nature of intimate partner violence (IPV). Although the term “domestic
violence” has a very clear specific meaning to advocates working in the
domestic violence field, it is used in other ways in other contexts to cover
many different types of couple conflict. This paper helps to clarify some of
the misunderstandings, errors, and apparent contradictions that derive in part
from these differences in language use, in part from not understanding where
the statistics come from and what the strengths and limitations of the data
are, and in part from wrongly treating “domestic violence” as a single
phenomenon.
Johnson,
Michael P., Janel M. Leone, and Yili Xu. (November,
2008). Gender, intimate terrorism, and situational couple violence in general
survey data: The gender debate revisited--again. Poster presented at the
National Council on Family Relations annual meeting. Little Rock, AR. (Powerpoint) We use National Violence Against Women
Survey data to develop an operationalization of intimate terrorism and
situational couple violence. We argue that past efforts to distinguish among
types of intimate partner violence in general survey data have committed a
critical error in using cluster analysis with data on current spouses. We
develop a valid operationalization based on data regarding ex-spouses. The data
on ex-spouses confirm past findings regarding a variety of differences between
intimate terrorism and situational couple violence, including the gender
patterns predicted by feminist theories of intimate partner violence. We then
apply this new operationalization to the current spouse data in the National
Violence Against Women Survey to demonstrate that general survey data on
current relationships contain little or no intimate terrorism. This finding has
major implications for the use of such data to test feminist theories of
intimate partner violence. The new operationalization avoids the vagaries of
cluster analysis in investigations of the balance of major types of
intimate partner violence in different populations.
Kelly,
Joan B. and Michael P. Johnson. (2008). Differentiation among types of intimate
partner violence: Research update and implications for interventions. Family Court
Review 46 (3),
476-499. A growing body
of empirical research has demonstrated that intimate partner violence is not a
unitary phenomenon and that types of domestic violence can be differentiated
with respect to partner dynamics, context, and consequences. Four patterns of
violence are described: Coercive Controlling Violence, Violent Resistance,
Situational Couple Violence, and Separation-Instigated Violence. The
controversial matter of gender symmetry and asymmetry in intimate partner
violence is discussed in terms of sampling differences and methodological
limitations. Implications of differentiation among types of domestic violence
include the need for improved screening measures and procedures in civil,
family, and criminal court and the possibility of better decision making, appropriate
sanctions, and more effective treatment programs tailored to the
characteristics of different types of partner violence. In family court,
reliable differentiation should provide the basis for determining what
safeguards are necessary and what types of parenting plans are appropriate to
ensure healthy outcomes for children and parent-child relationships.
Three important
characteristics of domestic violence emerge from the results of this study.
First, patriarchy does not necessarily lead to the use of violence. Second,
violence may be used primarily as a means of last resort, after all other
control tactics have failed. Third, discourses of love have to be incorporated
into our understanding of violence within the family.
Leone, Janel M., Michael P. Johnson, and
Catherine M. Cohan. (2007). Victim help-seeking: Differences between intimate
terrorism and situational couple violence. Family Relations 56 (5), 427-439. Research indicates that two major forms of partner
violence exist, intimate terrorism (IT) and situational couple violence (SCV).
The current study (N = 389) used a subgroup of women who responded to the Chicago
Women's Health Risk Study to examine whether type of violence experienced is
differentially related to formal (e.g., police, medical agencies, counseling)
and informal (e.g., family, friends/neighbors) help seeking. IT victims were
more likely to seek each type of formal help but were equally or less likely to
seek informal help. Findings can inform both family violence research and the
development and implementation of social service programs.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2007). Domestic violence: The intersection of gender and control.
In Laura L. O’Toole, Jessica R. Schiffman, &
Margie Kiter Edwards (Eds.), Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives, 2nd edition (pp. 257-268). New York: New York University
Press.
Reprinted in Andrew J. Cherlin (Ed.), Public &
Private Families, A Reader 5/e, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
The first section of this chapter will
demonstrate how attention to distinctions among types of intimate partner
violence makes sense of ostensibly contradictory data regarding men's and
women's violence in intimate relationships. The second section describes the
basic structure of the types of intimate partner violence that most people
associate with the term domestic violence, violence that is associated with
coercive control, that is, one partner's attempt to take general control over
the other. The third section presents a theory of domestic violence that is
focused on the relationship between gender and coercive control. The fourth
section addresses the role of gender in the type of intimate partner violence
that does not involve an attempt to take general control over one's partner.
The final section of the chapter deals with some of the intervention and policy
implications of what we know about these types of intimate partner violence and
their relationship to gender.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2006). A Sociologist’s Perspective on Domestic Violence: A
Conversation with Michael Johnson, Ph.D. Interview by Theodora Ooms, CLASP. Available at the Healthy Marriage Resource
Center Web site: http://www.healthymarriageinfo.org/docs/ASociologistsPerspective.pdf.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2006). Violence and
abuse in personal relationships: Conflict, terror, and resistance in intimate
partnerships. In Anita Vangelisti & Daniel Perlman (Eds.), Cambridge
Handbook of Personal Relationships (pp. 557-576. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. This chapter focuses on intimate partner violence (IPV). I
believe the two core lessons to be learned from work on IPV are simple,
profound, and broadly applicable to violence in all types of personal
relationships. First, one cannot understand violence in personal relationships
without understanding its role in the relationship itself. Second, and more
substantively, there are three quite different types of intimate partner
violence, identified by their role in the control context of the relationship
in which they are embedded. One type involves a violent attempt to take
complete control or at least generally dominate the relationship (intimate
terrorism), another involves violent resistance to such a control attempt
(violent resistance), and the third is violence that is a product of particular
conflicts or tensions within the relationship (situational couple violence). As
this chapter shows, the nature of the control context is a major theme in the
IPV literature, and although it has as yet received little attention in
research on other types of personal relationships, there are hints of it in the
parent-child literature.
Johnson, Michael P.
(2006). Conflict and control: Gender, symmetry, and asymmetry in domestic
violence. Violence
Against Women 12 (November), 1003-1018. Four types of individual
partner violence are identified on the basis of the dyadic control context of
the violence. In intimate terrorism the individual is violent and controlling;
the partner is not. In violent resistance the individual is violent but
not controlling; the partner is the violent and controlling one. In
situational couple violence, although the individual is violent, neither the
individual nor the partner is violent and controlling. In mutual violent
control both the individual and the partner are violent and controlling.
Evidence is presented that situational couple violence dominates the violence
identified in general surveys, while intimate terrorism and violent resistance
dominate the violence in agency samples, and that this is the source of
differences across studies with respect to the gender symmetry of partner
violence. An argument is made that if we want to understand partner
violence, to intervene effectively in individual cases, or to make useful
policy recommendations, we must make these distinctions in our research.
Johnson, Michael P.
(2005). Apples and oranges in child custody disputes: Intimate terrorism vs.
situational couple violence. Journal of Child Custody, 2 (4), 43-52. Also: A brief reply to Dutton.
Journal of
Child Custody, 2 (4), 65-67.
In response to
Dutton's (this issue) critique of feminist theories of domestic violence, the
author of this article makes three points relevant to the debate about the
gender asymmetry of intimate partner violence. First, there are three major
types of intimate partner violence, only one of which (intimate terrorism) is
the kind of violence that we all think of when we hear the term “domestic
violence.” Second, both major types of sampling designs in domestic violence
research are seriously biased, and those biases account for the fact that both
sides of this debate have been able to marshal ostensibly contradictory
empirical evidence for their position. Third, intimate terrorism (also know as
domestic violence, spouse abuse, wife-beating, etc.) is, indeed, primarily
male-perpetrated and, in the case of heterosexual relationships, probably best
understood through some version of a feminist theory of domestic violence. The
author then discusses the implications of these points for assessment of risk
in child custody deliberations.
I make four major
points in my response to the Fergusson, Horwood, and Ridder article, points that are equally relevant to other
articles like it that continue to appear in our journals and in the general
media suggesting that women are as violent as men in intimate relationships.
First, there are three major types of intimate partner violence, only one of
which is the kind of violence that we all think of when we hear the term
‘‘domestic violence.’’ Second, that type of intimate partner violence is,
indeed, primarily male perpetrated and is most definitely a gender issue.
Third, Fergusson, Horwood, and Ridder’s
article is not about that type of violence. In fact, it is hardly about
violence at all. Fourth, serious errors of fact, theory, and intervention
inevitably follow from the failure to acknowledge the major differences among
the three types of intimate partner violence.
Data from the National Violence Against
Women Survey show that the two major forms of husband violence toward their
wives (intimate terrorism and situational couple violence) have different
effects on their victims. Victims of intimate terrorism are attacked more
frequently and experience violence that is less likely to stop. They are more
likely to be injured, to exhibit more of the symptoms of posttraumatic stress
syndrome, to use painkillers (perhaps also tranquilizers), and to miss work.
They have left their husbands more often, and when they do leave, they are more
likely to acquire their own residence. If we want to understand the true impact
of wife abuse from survey data (rather than from agency data), we must make
distinctions among types of violence so that the data used to describe
battering are not diluted by data regarding other types of partner violence.
The current study used
a random sample of 563 low-income women to test Johnson’s (1995) theory that
there are two major forms of male-partner violence, situational couple violence
and intimate terrorism, which are distinguished in terms of their embeddedness in a general pattern of control. The study
examined the associations between type of violence experienced and respondents’
physical health, psychological distress, and economic well-being. Analyses
revealed three distinct patterns of partner violence: intimate terrorism,
control/no threat, and situational couple violence. Compared to victims of
control/no threat and situational couple violence, victims of intimate
terrorism reported more injuries from physical violence and more work/activity
time lost because of injuries. Compared to women who experienced no violence in
the previous year, victims of intimate terrorism reported a greater likelihood of
visiting a doctor, poorer health, more psychological distress, and a greater
likelihood of receiving government assistance
Johnson, Michael P. (2004). Review of Restorative Justice and Family Violence,
edited by Heather Strang and John Braithwaite. Contemporary
Sociology, 33
(PART 1), 96-97.
Johnson, Michael P. (2003). Review of Home Truths about Domestic Violence:
Feminist Influences on Policy and Practice, edited by J. Hanmer & C. Itzin. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 20
(2), 263.
Johnson, Michael P., Valerie Conklin, and Nividetha Menon. (2002, November). The effects of different types of domestic violence on women: Intimate terrorism vs. situational couple violence. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations. Houston, Texas.
Johnson,
Michael P. (2001). Review of The Violences of
Men, by Jeff Hearn. Contemporary
Sociology, 30 (#1), 26-27.
Johnson,
Michael P. and Kathleen J. Ferraro.
(2000). Research on
domestic violence in the 1990s: Making distinctions. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62 (November): 948-963. (Adobe) Reviews family literature on domestic violence and
suggests that 2 broad themes of the 1990s provide the most promising directions
for the future. The 1st is the importance of distinctions among types or
contexts of violence. Some distinctions are central to the theoretical and
practical understanding of the nature of partner violence, others provide
contexts for developing more sensitive and comprehensive theories, and others
may simply force questioning the tendency to generalize carelessly from one
context to another. Second, issues of control, although most visible in the
feminist literature that focuses on men using violence to control "their
women," also arise in other contexts, calling for more general analyses of
the interplay of violence power, and control in relationships. In addition to
these 2 general themes, the review covers literature on coping with violence,
the effects on victims and their children, and the social effects of partner
violence.
Klein, Renate and Michael P. Johnson. (2000). Conflict in family relationships. In Robert M. Milardo and Steve Duck (Eds.), Families as Relationships (pp. 79-97). New York: Wiley.
One of the most long-standing and acrimonious debates in the history of
the sociology of the family concerns the alleged gender-symmetry of domestic
violence. Using data from a late 1970s survey, this paper demonstrates
that the violence that most people associate with the term “domestic violence,”
i.e., recurrent, escalating, violent control of one’s partner, is decidedly
male. This conclusion is reached through the operationalization of a
typology of partner violence that is based in the connections of individual
violence with a general pattern of power and control, and that distinguishes
among four types of partner violence: patriarchal terrorism, common couple
violence, violent resistance, and mutual violent control. Patriarchal
terrorism, the type of violence that is referenced by the term “domestic
violence” in everyday speech and in the media, is almost exclusively
male. The most general implication of the results is that if we want to
understand the nature of violence that takes place between domestic partners,
we cannot continue to treat intimate violence as a unitary phenomenon.
When we fail to make important distinctions among types of violence, we get the
sort of conflicting, confusing evidence that has plagued the debate regarding
the gender asymmetry of domestic violence.
Johnson, Michael P. (1996). Violence against women in the family: The United States and Vietnam. Pp. 287-296 in Kathleen Barry (ed.), Vietnam 's Women in Transition. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Johnson, Michael P.
(1995). Patriarchal terrorism and common couple violence: Two forms of violence
against women in U.S. families. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57 (May):
283-294. (Adobe) This article argues that there are two
distinct forms of couple violence taking place within families in the United
States and other Western countries. A review of evidence from large-sample
survey research and from qualitative and quantitative data gathered from
women's shelters suggests that some families suffer from occasional outbursts
of violence from either husbands or wives (common couple violence), while other
families are terrorized by systematic male violence (patriarchal terrorism). It
is argued that the distinction between common couple violence and patriarchal
terrorism is important because it has implications for the implementation of
public policy, the development of educational programs and intervention
strategies, and the development of theories of interpersonal violence.