Violence / Aggression
Responsivity to Interviewer during Interview-Based Assessment of Intimate Partner Violence
Emily Taverna, M.S.
Graduate Assistant
The Pennsylvania State University
State College, Pennsylvania
Yunying Le, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania
Steffany J. Fredman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies & Psychology
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania
Jacqueline Mogle, Ph.D.
Associate Research Professor
The Pennsylvania State University
State College, Pennsylvania
Melanie S. Fischer, Ph.D.
Margarete von Wrangell-Fellow
Heidelberg University Hospital
Heidelberg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
Donald H. Baucom, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Psychology
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Amy D. Marshall, Ph.D.
Professor
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania
Recent studies suggest that interview methods for assessing intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration and victimization are favorable to self-report questionnaires. However, concerns have been raised about whether the presence of an interviewer elicits an emotional response in the participant that contributes to underreporting of IPV during interviews. To investigate this question, the current study examined (1) whether participants were emotionally responsive to an interviewer during an Event History Calendar Interview (EHCI) assessing for physical IPV perpetration and victimization and (2) whether the extent of participant responsivity to the interviewer predicted differential reporting of IPV perpetration and victimization during interviews relative to a self-report measure.
Participants were 83 individuals from 42 mixed gender couples. Vocal fundamental frequency (f0) was used as an index of communicated emotional arousal. Responsivity to the interviewer was defined as the extent to which participants’ emotional arousal was predicted by interviewers’ emotional arousal at the previous talk turn on a moment-by-moment basis. To quantify differential reporting of IPV perpetration and victimization, we compared reports during the EHCI relative to participants’ own self-report on the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus et al., 1996) and to the highest other available report, which accounted for partner reports.
Repeated measures actor-partner interdependence models conducted in a multi-level modeling framework indicated that, on average, participants were responsive to interviewers’ emotional arousal, even when controlling for the extent to which they were responsive to their own arousal, and that responsivity varied across participants. However, interviewers were not responsive to the participants’ emotional arousal. Further, participants’ responsivity to interviewer arousal did not predict differential reporting of either IPV perpetration or victimization during the interview relative to their own self-report or to the highest other available report.
Findings suggest that, although participants are responsive to interviewer arousal, this responsivity does not appear to reduce interview-based reporting of IPV relative to participant self-report, thus supporting the use of interviews within clinical and research contexts to obtain accurate reports of IPV. Given the richness of information that interviews may offer relative to self-report assessments, this may allow for improved research to better understand the nature of IPV, as well as better identification and intervention for such behaviors within clinical settings. This finding may generalize to other clinical or research settings when sensitive matters are discussed with interviewers.