Has Family Violence Decreased? A Response to J. Timothy Stocks.

Authors say that the analyst J. Timothy Stocks has carefully examined their recent report on trends in family violence and has pointed to some important methodological issues and problems. The presentation and publication of the results of both their first and second National Family Violence Surveys raised a storm of comment and controversy. A sample of this size was necessary because, if it had been smaller, even an increase or decrease of 20% in the violence rate would not have been statistically significant. However, from a practical point of view, anyone who has attempted to interview low-income, inner-city residents knows that the completion rate for face-to-face interviews is low. Thus, there is little practical evidence that the sampling frames in the two surveys were different. The category of house-holds excluded from the second survey were in all likelihood not reached in the first survey either-even though they were theoretically available in the sampling frame.