DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03410
title: Economic Distress, Community Context, and Intimate Violence in the United States, 1988 and 1994
title: Archival Version

description: 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.
description: 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?
description: 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.
description: 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.
description: Response Rates: Not applicable.
description: Presence of Common Scales: Several Likert-type scales were used.
description: Not applicable.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Economic Distress, Community Context, and Intimate Violence in the United States, 1988 and 1994
description: Families and households in the United States.
description: (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.