I also have the stats on DV Orders applied for and granted by the Magistrates courts from the same period -email me if you want copies.

Off the top of my head…i recall around 1 in every 50 adult Qlders are mentioned on a DV order as either the respondent, aggrieved or named persons. Yet, only about 40% of callers to the Emergency DV Crisis service have had any contact with the Police regarding their experience of DV.

In May of this year a large-scale study found that only 15.7% of domestic violence cases involved male-only violence against women.

That study uses the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS); the post gave links to a few excellent criticisms of the CTS. At the risk of being a self-promoter, I’d also add this post at my own blog to the list.

Helen already mentioned one huge problem with both studies cited in the posts you link to: the samples excluded people not currently in a relationship, so all violence by ex-partners was excluded. This is important, for the reason people here have already mentioned: a huge amount of male-on-female relationship violence happens in the context of break-ups. In addition, the particular study you quote statistics from used a convenience sample of students, not a representative sample, so you can’t extrapolate from this study’s results to the general population.

Another sampling problem – one actually mentioned in the study you quote – is that the small minority of people battered so severely and frequently that they need the use of a shelter, isn’t really represented by large-scale studies of general populations (or of students). To quote the same study you’re citing:

Conversely, what is true of the general population does not necessarily apply to clinical populations. To assume that it does has been called the “representative sample fallacyâ€? (Straus, 1990b). A simple but important example is the widely held belief that once partner violence starts, it may escalate, but it will not cease. That is correct for samples of women in shelters for battered women. They would not be there if it had ceased. On the other hand, studies of the general population such as Feld and Straus (1989) consistently find high rates of cessation. Thus, policies and practices based on the clinical group may not apply to the general population, just as advice based on the general population may not apply to clinical populations. Similarly, the results of this study concerning gender symmetry in perpetration and in etiology may not apply to severely assaulted and oppressed women, such as those who seek help from a shelter for battered women, or to women who are part of the small percent of violent couples (less than one percent) who have had violence progress to the point of police intervention (Kaufman Kantor & Straus, 1990).

The total picture is more complex than “women are more violent” versus “men are more violent.” There’s a lot of evidence which shows that many couples have infrequent and relatively less severe violence; this violence is as likely to come from women as from men, and is often mutual. But there’s also considerable evidence that the large majority of victims of the most severe, chronic violence are women.

You are either very new to blogging or astroturf of some sort for a TV series you mention in the first post on your blog. Either way, none of your posts thus far have anything to do with domestic violence, and thus your blog really isn’t relevant to this thread.

The way to get people to visit your blog is to make a substantive addition to the discussion, so that folks want to click on the URL (that’s linked to your name above the post) to see what other insightful commentary you have to offer on other matters. What you’ve done above is right on the borderline of spamming, and is seriously frowned upon netiquette-wise.