Attributing Responsibility and Assessing Gravity in Wife Abuse Situations

There is continued concern that legal and social systems underrespond to domestic violence. The present study compares police officers' and social workers' attributions of responsibility and their assessment of gravity of domestic violence incidents. The differential effect of eight contextual variables on attribution and assessment is also investigated by manipulating the variables in vignettes. Two-way analysis of variance was carried out, controlling for worker type and each of the contextual variables. Results indicate significant main effects for worker type on all variables defining attribution and assessment, though gender may play a role in some of the differences observed. Significant main effects were also observed for type of abuse, alleged provocation by the woman, child abuse and alcohol.