Intimate partner violence and domestic violence myths: a comparison of women with and without alcoholic husbands ( a study from India)

The alcoholism literature is replete with evidence documenting its adverse consequences for the family system in general and the interpersonal relationships of spouses in particular. An ex-post facto crossectional design was used to compare 150 women from India having alcoholic husbands with an equal number of women without alcoholic spouses. The two groups matched on key socio-demographic variables, were administered the Domestic Violence Myths Acceptance Scale (DVMAS, Peters, 2008) and the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS, Straus et al., 1996), to examine myths relating to domestic violence and the conflict tactics used by them. Higher levels of conflict were seen in the wives of alcoholics and on all its sub-dimensions namely negotiation, physical assault, injury, psychological aggression and sexual coercion. Differences were also significant on the sub-dimensions of the DVMAS namely character blame, behavior blame, perpetrator exoneration and minimization. Analysis of variance showed that wives of alcoholics from non-consanguineous or arranged marriages or nuclear families did not differ significantly from their counterparts in the reference group on the subject dimensions studied. Results indicate the need to address issues relating to conflict and domestic violence related myths as part of therapeutic interventions with wives of alcoholics.