Dating Conflict-Resolution Tactics and Exposure to Family Violence: University Students’ Experiences

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

While continuing scholarship on intimate partner violence and expanding place-based understanding of are important aims, overall, I am uncertain what new contributions this study offers other than to build the empirical literature in unexamined geographic locations. I felt this was especially true given the authors did not utilize a theoretical framework in order to connect the findings to shared models nor did they offer an innovative approach to deepening knowledge about a fairly well-documented phenomenon, the correlation between family of origin intimate partner relationship patterns and those experienced in one’s own dating and intimate partner relationships. Many theories exist to help us predict and explain things like dating violence among young adults (conditioning, cognitive, social learning, feminist, adverse childhood experiences, etc.) and some of these are reflected in references utilized for the paper, but none are offered as the lens for this study and for understanding its findings and their implications.

There are some places where editing for English language and general style would be helpful; a few examples include:

·       Abstract, line 5: add “to” so it reads “is to”

·       p. 1, line 37 – should “tends” be singular?

·       Line 38 – awkward phrasing, please rephrase

·       P. 2, line 47 – remove “to”

·       Lines 87-about 99 are examples of really long sentences that should be broken up a bit to help with clarity.

·       Line 110 – says “this” – do you mean “this study”?

·       When you use the word “characterize”, I wonder if “describe” is more accurate from a research design perspective as well as English language norms

·       Line 228 – delete “The”

·       Line 302 – delete “most”

·       Line 335 – I am not sure “justify” is the best or most accurate word here

Some other areas could use clarification:

·       On page 2, line 69, you use the phrase “young girls” when discussing a study. Is that relevant to university students (adults)?

·       Line 71 uses the phrase “gender/sex”. Unless that is the exact way something you are citing was written, this needs to be changed. Gender and sex are not the same constructs and certainly the difference there is critical to understand if you are then going to explore any correlations based on gender or on sex related to IPV, which according to the existing literature, are many. This also obscures the reader’s understanding of study participants and the nature of the intimate partner relationships explored here. Were the participant relationships only heterosexual ones? Was that question asked? Either way, it should be acknowledged that IPV also occurs in same-sex relationships and clarified if that is known in this sample.

·       Line 72 – using the phrase “so-called” implies you are questioning the legitimacy of this. That is problematic.

·       P. 2, line 75 – by “element”, do you mean person? Behavior? Not clear, muddles the meaning.

·       Line 119 – incidence rate for what? Female victimization? Police reports? Arrest?

·       Line 132 – students pursuing a “degree” or a “master’s degree” – what is the first kind?

Additional concerns and suggestions:

·       Terms are not well-defined or consistent, i.e. domestic violence, dating violence, IPV. One definition at lines 39-42 has no citation though claims to be a legal definition.

·       The IPV definition in the intro strikes me as odd – love isn’t necessarily part of a dating relationship, nor is it required by any definition I have ever read before. The sentence following that one seems better and serves the purpose, though you should consider including definitions from scholarly literature and/or legal sources.

·       Why discuss the CTS2 in the introduction when it really belongs in the methods where you also have it, and with discussion of the other instruments? Didn’t make sense there. You also did not offer any info when describing data collection about its validity (only reliability). Is the CTS2 basically your theoretical framework? You explain it first as strategies of conflict resolution (psychological aggression, physical assault – no injury, physical assault – injury, and sexual coercion), which makes no sense as they are not exhaustive nor can one control or predict injury as a strategy employed in order to achieve a specific goal. So we have these four conflict resolution “strategies” as well as one on the other end of the continuum, negotiation. These are not clear constructs, one reason I wonder about validity. But later you reference these four things as being typologies, which makes much more sense, but then nullifies the entire hypothesis about these being conflict resolution approaches that have some correlation to patterns of behavior one was exposed to during childhood. So that is incredibly problematic.

·       What is the so-what of this article? What are the implications and how does this add to what is known and IPV? You give conclusions at the end, but no meaning is made of the findings. What do they mean for policy? What do they suggest for future research, specifically? How can they inform practice?

·       Not many correlational findings are presented though that seems the crux of the paper’s purpose. The only finding reported that was related to the question of gender differences highlighted one area in which men report higher levels of self-perceived victimization. This strikes me as biased as well as incomplete. What else did you find and why does gender (or do you mean sex) matter?

·       What is an abusive strategy of “a slight nature”, defined by whom?

·       How did you define a history of an “intimate relational experience” among participants?

·       What was your sampling method? No discussion of this at all.

·       Do the statistics presented in section 3.1 apply across all respondents?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1

Thank you for your comments and suggestions regarding the manuscript entitled “Dating Conflict Resolution Tactics and Exposure to Family Violence: University students’ experiences” submitted to Social Sciences. Please, see the attachment to see how we addressed them. We believe the manuscript is now stronger and clearer due to your appreciation.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This study aimed to characterize the conflict resolution strategies used in dating relationships, characterize the exposure to violence dynamics in the family of origin, and analyze the correlation between these two variables in a sample of Portuguese university students aged 18 to 30. Overall, this study was well written and methodologically sound. While the authors' finding that a correlation exists between exposure to family violence and violence in the context of future dating relationships was not entirely surprising, the broader topic of intimate partner violence is important. There were also some useful secondary findings, such as those related to gender.

To further strengthen this manuscript, I would encourage the authors to be clearer about their study's contributions to the existing literature. What gap(s) were they hoping that this work would fill? The second last paragraph of the introduction seems to suggest that focusing on Madeira as the study context was important given the high prevalence of family violence, which if it is the only justification for this study, would make it of interest to only a relatively narrow readership. Was there anything else unique about the study besides the geographic area in which it was conducted? More clearly articulating the gaps that this study was intending to fill would solidify its contribution to the literature.

With respect to the methods, I would suggest that the demographic information about included participants in 2.1 be moved to the results, and that this section be written in past tense.

Regarding the inclusion criteria, were only participants in heterosexual relationships (i.e., woman dating a man or vice versa) include in the study sample? Did any participants identify as being in a same-sex relationship?

When reading the results, I was extremely surprised to read that nearly 80% of participants had experienced or perpetrated some kind of intimate abuse in the context of a dating relationship. Despite the sample coming from a geographic area that has high rates of intimate partner violence, these values still seemed high to me. How did the authors define intimate abuse in their study? For example, was any participant who reported experiencing or using a conflict resolution strategy other than negotiation at least one time considered to have experienced or perpetrated intimate abuse or were multiple incidents necessary?

In Table 1, it is not clear what is being compared when reporting the chi-square statistics. Is it the differences in the prevalence of "slight" versus "severe" strategies? I would also suggest adding the p-values in another column directly in both Table 1 and 2. In Table 3, it is not clear what values are being presented in the table.

With respect to the discussion, and more specifically the limitations, I did not understand why social desirability would lead to more participants reporting physical abuse with and without injury. Wouldn't most participants want to avoid admitting that they had experienced or perpetrated more serious forms of intimate abuse? Moreover, while there may have been some degree of social desirability bias in this study given the topic, the overall rate of intimate abuse is much higher than one would expect.

I would also suggest that the authors discuss some of the potential limitations of using the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2) as a measure in this study. While this measure has been used fairly extensively in research on intimate partner violence, it does have some criticisms, such as the fact that it does not provide any information about the context in which a violent act occurred, and the fact that it only considers violence stemming from conflicts between partners rather than a desire for control. Several types of abuse are not measured by the CTS2, such as economic abuse, isolation, or intimidation.

I hope that these suggestions are helpful for the authors in revising their work and congratulate them on their work thus far!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2

Thank you for your comments and suggestions regarding the manuscript entitled “Dating Conflict Resolution Tactics and Exposure to Family Violence: University students’ experiences” submitted to Social Sciences. Please, see the attachment to see how we addressed them. We believe the manuscript is now stronger and clearer due to your appreciation.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf