Relationship factors and depressive symptomatology associated with mild and severe husband-to-wife physical aggression.

This study uses a gender-specific approach to investigate the association among relationship factors, depressive symptomatology and husbands' marital violence in 327 couples who attended a marital therapy clinic. Both spouses reports were used to group couples according to husbands' verbal (VA), mild physical (MA), and severe physical (SA) aggression as measured by the Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus, 1979). Frequency of aggression and spouses' perceptions about their partners' communication skills during conflict (i.e., use of hostile, verbally aggressive and avoidant conflict styles) were different for all groups. Reports on marital quality, conflict management style, cognitions about marriage, and individual affective state were more negative for both spouses when husbands were severely physically aggressive. Wives in the SA group were most likely to believe that partners cannot change. Discriminant function analysis provided substantial prediction of group membership when husbands were verbally or severely aggressive, but weaker prediction when husbands engaged in mild physical aggression. The limits of current measures of dyadic processes for marital violence research are discussed.