Economic Distress, Community Context, and Intimate Violence in the United States, 1988 and 1994 (ICPSR 3410)

Version Date: Aug 16, 2002

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Principal Investigator(s):
Michael L. Benson, University of Cincinnati; Greer Litton Fox, University of Tennessee

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03410.v1

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Summary

Because of their restricted access to financial resources, couples undergoing economic distress are more likely to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods than are financially well-off couples. The link between individual economic distress and community-level economic disadvantage raises the possibility that these two conditions may combine or interact in important ways to influence the risk of intimate violence against women. This study examined whether the effect of economic distress on intimate violence was stronger in disadvantaged or advantaged neighborhoods or was unaffected by neighborhood conditions. This project was a secondary analysis of data drawn from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and from the 1990 United States Census. From the NSFH, the researchers abstracted data on conflict and violence among couples, as well as data on their economic resources and well-being, the composition of the household in which the couple lived, and a large number of socio-demographic characteristics of the sample respondents. From the 1990 Census, the researchers abstracted tract-level data on the characteristics of the census tracts in which the NSFH respondents lived. Demographic information contains each respondent's race, sex, age, education, income, relationship status at Wave 1, marital status at Wave 1, cohabitation status, and number of children under 18. Using variables abstracted from both Wave 1 and Wave 2 of the NSFH and the 1990 Census, the researchers constructed new variables, including degree of financial worry and satisfaction for males and females, number of job strains, number of debts, changes in debts between Wave 1 and Wave 2, changes in income between Wave 1 and Wave 2, if there were drinking and drug problems in the household, if the female was injured, number of times the female was victimized, the seriousness of the violence, if the respondent at Wave 2 was still at the Wave 1 address, and levels of community disadvantage.

Citation

Benson, Michael L., and Fox, Greer Litton. Economic Distress, Community Context, and Intimate Violence in the United States, 1988 and 1994  . [distributor], 2002-08-16. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03410.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (98-WT-VX-0011)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

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Date of Collection

1998

Data Collection Notes

  1. (1) More information about the NSFH is available from the original data producers at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/nsfh. (2) The user guide and codebook are provided by ICPSR as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.
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Study Purpose

Because of their restricted access to financial resources, couples undergoing economic distress are more likely to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods than are financially well-off couples. The link between individual economic distress and community- level economic disadvantage raises the possibility that these two conditions may combine or interact in important ways to influence the risk of intimate violence against women. This study examined whether the effect of economic distress on intimate violence was stronger in disadvantaged or advantaged neighborhoods or unaffected by neighborhood conditions. The researchers intended to answer the following questions: (1) How do measures of community correlate with the prevalence, frequency, severity, and duration of intimate violence? (2) To what extent do different forms of economic distress influence the use of violence by men against women in intimate relationships? (3) How do changes in economic distress influence the initiation, maintenance, desistence, and escalation of violence by men in intimate relationships and to what extent do known precursors of violence mediate the impact of changes in economic distress on violence? (4) Does change over time in economic distress influence intimate violence independently of community context and household characteristics, or does it interact with these factors to produce varying risk levels for women located in different types of areas and households? (5) Are the effects of community context and economic distress on intimate violence more pronounced for minority women, or do they operate independently of race and other demographic characteristics?

Study Design

The data used for this project came from the first and second waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) conducted by the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison [NATIONAL SURVEY OF FAMILIES AND HOUSEHOLDS: WAVE I, 1987-1988, AND WAVE II, 1992-1994 (ICPSR 6906)]. The NSFH was designed to cover a broad range of family structures, processes, and relationships with a large enough sample to permit subgroup analysis. The first wave of the NSFH was conducted in 1988 and included a national probability sample of 13,017 respondents. Information was collected regarding the respondent's family living arrangements in childhood, marital and cohabiting experiences, education, fertility, alcohol use, employment history, kin contact, and economic and psychological well-being. Five years after the original interview, the sample from the first wave was reinterviewed. This project was a secondary analysis of data drawn from Waves 1 and 2 of the NSFH and from the 1990 United States Census. From the NSFH, the researchers abstracted data on conflict and violence among couples, as well as data on their economic resources and well-being, the composition of the household in which the couple lived, and a large number of socio-demographic characteristics of the sample respondents. From the 1990 Census, the researchers abstracted tract-level data on the characteristics of the census tracts in which the NSFH respondents lived.

Sample

Not applicable.

Universe

Families and households in the United States.

Unit(s) of Observation

Individuals.

Data Source

NATIONAL SURVEY OF FAMILIES AND HOUSEHOLDS: WAVE I, 1987-1988, AND WAVE II, 1992-1994 (ICPSR 6906)

Data Type(s)

Description of Variables

Demographic information contains each respondent's race, sex, age, education, income, relationship status at Wave 1, marital status at Wave 1, cohabitation status, and number of children under 18. Using variables abstracted from both Wave 1 and Wave 2 of the NSFH and the 1990 Census, the researchers constructed new variables, including degree of financial worry and satisfaction for males and females, number of job strains, number of debts, changes in debts between Wave 1 and Wave 2, changes in income between Wave 1 and Wave 2, if there were drinking and drug problems in the household, if the female was injured, number of times the female was victimized, the seriousness of the violence, if the respondent at Wave 2 was still at the Wave 1 address, and levels of community disadvantage.

Response Rates

Not applicable.

Presence of Common Scales

Several Likert-type scales were used.

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Original Release Date

2002-08-16

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • Benson, Michael L., and Greer Litton Fox. ECONOMIC DISTRESS, COMMUNITY CONTEXT, AND INTIMATE VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1988 AND 1994. ICPSR version. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati [producer], 2002. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2002. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03410.v1

2002-08-16 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Standardized missing values.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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Notes

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.