Conflict tactics scale

The conflict tactics scale (CTS), created by Murray A. Straus in 1979, is the "most widely used instrument in research on family violence." There are two versions of the CTS; the CTS2 (an expanded and modified version of the original CTS) and the CTSPC (CTS Parent-Child). As of 2005, the CTS has been used in about 600 peer reviewed scientific or scholarly papers, including longitudinal birth-cohort studies. National surveys conducted in the USA include two National Family Violence Surveys (1975 and 1985), the National Violence Against Women Survey (1998), which, according to Straus, used a "feminist version" of the CTS in order to minimize data on female perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV), and the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. A major international survey to use the CTS was the 2006 International Dating Violence Study, which investigated IPV amongst 13,601 college students across thirty-two different countries.

In a 2005 article in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling listed the CTS amongst the most important advances in the field of IPV research, stating it "was revolutionary because it allowed researchers to quantitatively study events that had often been ignored culturally and typically took place in private."

However, the CTS is one of the most widely criticized domestic violence measurement instruments due to its exclusion of context variables and motivational factors in understanding acts of violence. The National Institute of Justice cautions that the CTS may not be appropriate for IPV research "because it does not measure control, coercion, or the motives for conflict tactics."

The scales are based on the premise that conflict is an inevitable aspect of all human association, but that the use of coercion (including force and violence) as a conflict-resolution tactic is harmful. The CTS focuses on "conflict tactics" – the method used to advance one's own interest within a conflict – as a behavior, and measures the conflict tactic behaviors of both the respondent and their partner/primary caregiver. However, the CTS "deliberately excludes attitudes, emotions, and cognitive appraisal of the behaviors" measured. This is because many victims of IPV do not see themselves as suffering abuse, and as such, their cognitive appraisal of their situation can affect the measurements of the CTS. Straus explains that the "discrepancy between the behavior and the cognitive appraisal of the behavior is important for understanding family violence and for designing programs of prevention and treatment. However, it is possible to identify the discrepancy only if there is an instrument such as the CTS which obtains the behavioral data."

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