Interspousal Aggression in Law Enforcement Families a Preliminary Investigation

"As the National Center for Women and Policing noted in a heavily footnoted information sheet, '2 studies take found that at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to x pct of families in the general population.'" — Conor Friedersdorf,The Atlantic,9/28/14

The National Eye for Women and Policing website is currently downwardly, just we tin use the Wayback Machine to meet what Friedersdorf is citing.  The ii studies cited by the Center are:

•  Johnson, L.B. (1991).On the front end lines: Police stress and family well-beingness. Hearing before the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families Firm of Representatives: 102 Congress Showtime Session May 20 (p. 32-48). Washington DC: United states of america Authorities Printing Role.
• Neidig, P.H., Russell, H.E. & Seng, A.F. (1992). Interspousal aggression in constabulary enforcement families: A preliminary investigation. Police Studies, Vol. fifteen (1), p. 30-38.

Johnson source

The Johnson source is the testimony of Leanor Boulin Johnson who at the fourth dimension was a professor in the Department of Family Studies at Arizona State University (she currently is emeritus at ASU).  Johnson explains she surveyed 728 officers and 479 police spouses in "two East Declension police departments (moderate to large in size)".  She says the sample was drawn in 1983, then presumably the survey was conducted in that year. In that location is no information on response rates nor how officers were selected, nor how they were invited to participate.  The 40% figure is mentioned on page 42:

Ten per centum of the spouses reported being physically abused by their mates at least once; the same percentage claim that their children were physically  abused. The officers were asked a less direct question, that is, if they had ever gotten out of control and behaved violently against their spouse and children in the last 6 months.  We did not define the type of violence. Thus, violence could accept been interpreted as exact or concrete threats or actual physical abuse. Approximately, 40 per centum said that in the terminal six months prior to the survey they had behaved violently towards their spouse or children. Given that xx-thirty percent of the spouses claimed that their mate oftentimes became verbally abusive towards them or their children, I suspect that a significant number of constabulary officers defined violent equally both verbal and physical corruption.

Neidig et al Source

Like the Johnson study, the Neidig et al. study relies on survey self-reports of police officers.  They surveyed 385 male officers, 40 female person officers, and 115 female spouses who were apparently attending in-service training sessions and law enforcement conferences "in a southwestern state" (presumably Arizona; Neidig'southward co-authors Harold Russell and Albert Seng'south institutional affiliation was listed as the Tuscon police department).

To measure domestic violence, they used the "Modified Conflict Tactics Scale" which gives subjects a listing of 25 conflict behaviors and asks them to study the number of times they had engaged in each of them during the past year on a "vii-bespeak calibration ranging from 'never' to 'more than than 20 times a year'", although in their analyses they collapse this into "never" versus "ever".   They give examples of items constituting "minor" and "astringent" violence:

They present their findings in this tabular array.

I am a trivial unsure how to interpret it, but they say that the "reported perpetrator, either cocky, spouse, or both, of the violence is listed" so I think this means that 28% of male officers written report inflicting either "minor or severe" violence on their spouse and 33% study receiving small or severe violence from their wives; 33% of wives say they inflicted pocket-size or severe violence on their spouses, and 25% of police wives say they have received minor or severe violence.  What is noteworthy is that both male officers and wives' reports agree that wives are a little more likely to commit whatever violence than are the officers.

The NCWP factsheet alluded to a comparing with the general population; this apparently also came from the Neidig et al. paper which used 1985 survey information from the National Family Violence Resurvey.  Neidig et al. exercise not talk near how the survey measured domestic violence simply looking at the user's guide (p. 56) suggests the two surveys used comparable items.  Neidig et al.'south tabulation comparing rates of domestic violence for law enforcement and noncombatant families uses the male police officer's survey reports (not the survey reports of the law wives nor those of female person officers).  As Neidig et al. say, it looks like rates of severe violence are pretty similar for law enforcement and noncombatant families; the main difference appeares to be in rates of "minor" violence.

Wrap Up

I confess that when I started this statistical scavenger chase, I was expecting eventually to find this statistic was crap, but indeed there were two contained studies in the early 1990s showing that domestic violence is pretty common in police families.  However, the Johnson statistic is simply referring to domestic violence committed past police officers; the Neidig et al. statistic is referring to domestic violence committed by either police officers or their spouses–if we merely focus on police force officers in the Neidig et al. study the effigy is 28% which is notwithstanding pretty high.

I am not crazy that the Neidig et al. study appears to be using a convenience sample and that both studies are pretty vague on recruitment.  On the other hand, I would expect that whatever sampling bias would run in the direction of underestimating domestic violence.  That is, officers who do perpetuate domestic violence would be less probable to volunteer to take a survey measuring various forms of personal and professional dysfunction.

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Source: https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-families-experience-domestic-violence/

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