Situational determinants in intimate partner violence

A situational or event perspective examines the connections between unfolding events and their surrounding contexts. This perspective offers great promise for increasing our understanding of violence among intimate partners, yet, has been rarely applied to this problem. Using such an approach, this review summarizes what is known in this area and highlights gaps in our knowledge about the connections between specific event characteristics. Surprisingly, domestic violence researchers rarely examine domestic violence events per se. We suggest ways of doing this: By collecting rich data on the heterogeneity of violent events among intimate partners, we can close outstanding gaps in our knowledge of this problem. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.