Conflict Tactics Scale
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Abstract
The Conflict Tactics Scale measure consists of 80 items
developed by Straus (1979) to explore intrafamily conflict and violence,
focusing particularly on the adults in the family. Of these 80 items,
20 are administered to the parent about his/her relationship with
the child. The next 20 questions are directed to the parent about
the partner and his/her interactions with the child. If there is
no partner, these questions are not asked. The last 40 questions
of the measure address the interactions between the parent and the
parent's partner using the same questions. The measure assesses
how the parent reacts in a conflict with the child, such as trying
to discuss an issue calmly, yelling at or insulting the child, stomping
out of the room or house, threatening to spank the child, and hitting
or trying to hit the child. The items gradually become more coercive
and aggressive as they progress. The items are rated on a seven-point
scale, ranging from 0=never to 6=almost every day.
This instrument has four scales: Parent-Child (Scale 1), Partner-Child
(Scale 2), Parent-Partner (Scale 3), and Partner-Parent (Scale 4).
The parent-child and partner-child conflict scales each have five
subscales and the two parent-partner scales have four subscales
each. The five subscales (Strassberg, Dodge, Bates, and Pettit,
1992; Strassberg, Dodge, Pettit, and Bates, 1994) are: verbal discussion,
verbal aggression, hostile-indirect withdrawal, physical aggression,
and spanking. The parent-partner and partner-parent scales do not
include the spanking subscale. Subscale scores are created by taking
the mean for each set of variables for a given subscale by observation
and then by finding the subscale means across all observations.
Analysts should be aware of possible distributional issues; subscales
for physical aggression and hostile-indirect withdrawal were highly
skewed in a positive direction. Two other subscales were also skewed:
verbal aggression and spanking. The verbal discussion subscale was
almost normally distributed.
Keywords: Parental Communication, Physical Abuse, Parent Attitudes,
Child Discipline, Punishment, Emotional Abuse, Family Relations.
Administration History
See study
years administered.
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19 November 2002
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