Battered-wife study queried

Press, 13 July 1984, Page 29

Battered-wife study queried

Conclusions drawn by Dr John Church in his study on battered women should not be accepted uncritically, says a biostatistician with the Christchurch Clinical School of Medicine, Dr Elisabeth Wells.

“While Dr Church has demolished some old myths on domestic violence, he has also established some new myths,” she has said.

In his report, “Violence Against Wives: Its Causes and Effects,” which was released on July 2, Dr Church asserted that battered wives were no more likely to come from relationships where alcohol was a problem or the family income was low.

He interviewed a group of 101 women for the study, all of whom had called the Battered Women’s Support Group. “Dr Church lays to rest the myth that alcohol causes ill domestic violence or that only drunken husbands beat or threaten their wives,” said Dr> Wells.

“However, his new myth is that alcohol does not

contribute to domestic violence.”

Dr Wells said she had no quarrel with Dr Church’s study as a description of a particular group, but she did not agree with some of the causes that he had tried to establish.

“His study contains much of interest and his concern for the victims is evident. However, it should be read with caution and not accepted uncritically,” Dr Wells said. “He has a self-selected group of women who have been battered. To see what factors contributed to the violence against them, it is necessary to try to take into account both the selfselection of his sample and the characteristics of the population, not just battered women and their husbands,” she said.

Dr Wells’s job is to assess research. She is a former member of the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Council’s research committee and is involved with local alcohol research.

“I am concerned about the report in my general role as a researcher,” she said. “The main problem

with it relates to the logic of trying to establish causes from' just one group. “Alcohol appears to be a major contributing factor for at least that sub-group of women who are assaulted only when their husbands have been drinking.

"This sub-group is presumably under-represented in Dr Church’s sample because such women may well seek help from an alcohol treatment agency or support group rather than from the Battered Women’s Support Group.” A second criticism she had was that Dr Church’s own data showed that heavy-drinking husbands were over-represented in his sample. This suggested that alcohol did play some role in violence against wives, said Dr Wells.

In his report. Dr Church was particularly critical of the role played by the police when family violence was brought to their attention. The survey results indicated that 46 per cent of the women found the police to be definitely unhelpful and unsupportive. However, it was hard to argue "backwards” like this

from one particular group, said Dr Wells.

"It may be that the police in general cope no better than this group of women says, but it is quite possible there is a bias in Dr Church’s sample. “If the police had resolved a situation involving family violence early on, the woman probably would not have gone to the Battered Women’s Support Group," she said. Women who approached the Battered Women’s Support Group were those for whom various means of

controlling violence had not worked.

It was dangerous to try assessing the effectiveness of different ways of coping wjth violence or intervention just by looking at this group. Dr Wells said. Dr Church was more careful in exploring the possible role of social class in domestic violence. His study concluded that marriages could deteriorate into violence regardless of socioeconomic status or income, destroying the old myth that only lower-class men beat their wives, she said.