Interspousal violence.

This initial paper, from a planned series, presents an introductory survey of interspousal violence from 562 Calgary couples. Assumptions from conflict and exchange theories guide the analyses which focus on selected structural and interactional factors. Questionnaires and interviews from both partners provide the responses for both single-item indicators and scales, built through factor analysis, which are analyzed using simple percentages and Pearson's zero order coefficients. Three types of violence, husband-to-wife, wife-to-husband, and mutual, are investigated and found to be pervasive. All occur in every SES, educational, and income level. Although age, marital status, length of marriage, and number of children are associated with interspousal violence, the strongest relationships are classified as interactional. These include aggression, marital conflict, and work strain. Although violence is negatively correlated with marital satisfaction, significantly large proportions of highly satisfied couples report conjugal violence. Such evidence lends support to the dialectic notion that love and affection exist simultaneously with conflict and violence.