Partner violence has roots in ethnicity, history, study finds.

2003 OCT 2 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Ethnicity and a history of intimate partner violence raises the risk of such violence, according to a new study that examines data from two national surveys of couples conducted 5 years apart.

The study authors note that efforts to deal with this problem should account for ethnic background, rather than using a generic approach.

"Black and Hispanic couples were at two to three times' greater risk of violence by both men and women compared to white couples, even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, alcohol consumption, alcohol-related problems, and psychosocial variables," say Craig Field, PhD, MPH, and Raul Caetano, MD, MPH, PhD, of the University of Texas Houston School of Public Health in Dallas.

Their findings appear in the September 2003 issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

In 2000, Field and principal investigator Caetano interviewed 1,025 heterosexual couples first surveyed in 1995 who were still married or living together. These included 406 white couples, 232 black couples, and 387 Hispanic couples. Both members of each couple were of the same ethnic group.

The researchers asked about any violent episodes, whether perpetrated by men or women against their partners. They also inquired about a history of childhood abuse, impulsiveness, alcohol problems, heavy drinking, and attitudes toward aggression within marriage.

Among white couples, the presence of intimate partner violence by either men or women in 1995 raised the risk of males engaging in violence against their female partners in 2000 by nine times. Alcohol played a role in determining the victim among these couples. Women who drank heavily (five or more drinks per occasion) were six times more likely to be abused by their partner, while white men who drank more suffered at the hands of their female partners, Field says.