Abstract
The present study compared impact of participating in laboratory research assessments on couples experiencing partner violence and nonviolent couples. Across two studies, 192 couples participated in a variety of potentially distressing laboratory procedures, including discussing relationship problems, viewing videotapes of their discussions, and completing questionnaires about personal and relationship problems. At the end of each laboratory session, participants rated their emotions about their partners as a result of having participated in the study procedures. Couples, recruited from the community, were placed into one of three groups: experiencing violence (V), nonviolent but maritally distressed (NVD), and nonviolent and nondistressed (NVND). Overall, study participants did not report high levels of negative feelings toward their spouses at the end of lab sessions. Few differences between V and NVD spouses were statistically significant, suggesting that violent spouses are not at greater risk than NVD spouses for negative feelings following study participation, although the finding of greater fear among V partners in one study deserves future attention. Relative to V and NVD couples, happy couples reported more positive and fewer negative feelings; NVD wives were the most likely to report negative emotions, in sessions involving a marital problem discussion. These findings can be used in discussions with Institutional Review Boards about the potential risks of laboratory procedures for violent couples recruited from the community.
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Notes
The two original studies were designed to study husband violence (not couple violence) and thus, couples were placed into subject groups based only on the presence or absence of husband violence; across both studies, the original number of study participants was 203. Only 11 V couples across both studies had experienced only husband violence and no wife violence. This low figure is not unexpected given the prevalence of bi-directional violence among violent couples (Archer, 2000). But, given that such couples might differ from couples in which both spouses are violent, we chose to drop these 11 husband only violent couples from the main study analyses. Instead, the present study included only V couples in which both partners had engaged in violence in the past year, lowering our overall N to 192.
To improve readability, specific group post hoc contrasts were not presented. Interested readers can request this information from the first author.
A possible concern is that men in uni-directionally V couples may engender more fear in their female partners than husbands in bi-directionally V relationships. To test this idea, we conducted a repeated measures ANOVA on ratings of ratings of fear/scared/afraid. The between subject factor was group (bi-directionally V couples versus husband-V only couples) and there were two within subject factors: gender (husband, wife) and lab assessment session (lab discussion session, no lab discussion session). Due to the small number of uni-directionally V couples (N = 11 across both studies), reports from Study 1 and Study 2 were combined. There were no significant main effects of gender, F(1, 103) = .06, p = .80, or assessment session, F(1, 103) = .58, p = .45, or group, F(1, 103) = .00, p = .95. There was no significant session X group interaction, F(1, 103) = 1.78, p = .19, gender X group interaction, F(1, 103) = .02, p = .90, session x gender interaction, F(1, 103) = 2.16, p = .15, or discussion X gender X group interaction, F(1, 103) = .99, p = .32. Notably, among the uni-directionally V couples, no participant rated fear/scared/afraid greater than 4 (“somewhat”). However, as there were only 11 uni-directionally V couples, this exploratory analysis may have inadequate power to detect group difference; the possibility of fear among couples experiencing only husband violence requires further study in future research.
As mentioned in the introduction, any negative emotion ratings over 4 required our research team to individually interview the spouses about their concerns and to take any appropriate actions to reduce negative feelings and any possible danger of conflict and violence (e.g., taking a break to calm down, calling the police to intervene). Indeed, we encourage IPV researchers to develop safety protocols that include requesting assistance from local police or domestic violence shelter in the unlikely extreme case of a violent incident. Other measures may also be needed. For example, regardless of emotion ratings, IPV researchers may wish to provide domestic violence and shelter referral materials to all couples. Notably, an anonymous reviewer suggested that incorporating potentially beneficial therapies as part of the study protocol may offset the risk of violence and that communication data gathered during laboratory assessments may be used to inform the delivery of such therapy.
It is important to note that failure to find significant group differences using traditional null hypothesis significance tests, such as in those used in the present research, allows researchers to reject the null hypothesis that no differences are detected, yet it also does not indicate that groups are equivalent. We caution readers from concluding that non-significant group differences indicate equivalence between groups. Statistical equivalence tests, which are applied increasingly among the behavioral sciences, help to determine if two or more groups are “functionally equivalent” or whether they are “practically similar.” That is, they examine whether group differences are meaningful. Equivalence tests are advantageous when utilizing very large sample sizes, which inflate the probability of finding minute mean group differences that may be functionally meaningless; in the present study, we did not have such a large sample. In addition, a controversial aspect of equivalence tests is the requirement of an a priori decision of what constitutes a minimum difference in the dependent variable that is acceptable for declaring group differences to be meaningful. In the present research, a determination of the degree of difference (e.g., increase in ratings of fear) necessary in the emotion ratings to indicate a practical or meaningful difference is not yet possible. Such a determination requires insight into the functional meaning of incremental differences in ratings on the EC, which is beyond the scope of the present research. Also, at present, we are not able to determine what measurement of difference in ratings of emotions translate into meaningful increases in the risk of violence. For discussions of equivalence tests in psychological research, see Rogers, Howard, and Vessey (1993) and Seaman and Serlin (1998).
Another potential concern is whether or not V couples engage in physically aggressive behaviors during laboratory interactions. Couples participating in our studies are carefully monitored during their conflict discussions. Across the hundreds of couples who have participated in our research, physical aggression has never been observed during any laboratory interaction, including couples’ conflict discussions. To our knowledge, only one group of researchers has reported that physical aggression occurred during couples’ laboratory discussion, and this was among an adolescent sample of mostly unmarried couples selected for risk of delinquent behavior on the part of the male partners (Capaldi & Crosby, 1997). It is difficult to determine how closely participants in that study resemble participants in other IPV research. Nonetheless, future researchers are encouraged to closely monitor all couples for aggression during any potentially distressing laboratory tasks.
As in most areas of research, until more data on risk are gathered, ethical decisions about acceptable levels of risk are individual decisions, made by each researcher in consultation with colleagues and IRBs. Thus, different researchers may come to different conclusions. For example, an anonymous reviewer stated that “the singular prior published report by Gottman et al. (1995; reporting that one woman indicated that a violent argument may have been related to involvement in the study), provided evidence of the potential danger of research assessments (of couples’ discussions of relationship problems), and on the basis of this finding, [I] decided that such risks outweigh the benefits of such research, indicating that the tasks are unethical under most circumstances.” We disagree, but it is our hope that continued investigation into the impact of study participation serves to inform researchers when such decisions have to be made.
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Clements, K., Holtzworth-Munroe, A. Participation in Laboratory Research Result in Emotional Distress with One’s Partner: Comparing Violent and Nonviolent Couples. J Fam Viol 24, 283–295 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-009-9229-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-009-9229-4