Alcohol abuse, intimate partner violence, and restriction: Reports from inner-city battered women.
Lewis, C.S., Chu, M., Griffing, S., Sage, R.E., Jospitre, T., Madry, L., & Primm, B.J.
Presented at the College on Problems of Drug Dependence in Bal Harbour, Florida (June 2003).

This study investigates batterer’s alcohol abuse, physical violence, and restriction amongst survivors seeking emergency shelter. 70 women completed structured, self-report interviews on an array of psychosocial measures including partner’s chemical dependency history. A substantial portion of batterers were reported to be heavily intoxicated on at least a weekly basis. We predicted that alcohol abuse would intensify partner abuse. However, mean levels of violence and restriction were indistinguishable for survivors with batterers who abused alcohol and survivors with batterers who did not. The results point to the need to look beyond stereotypic assumptions and cast a wider net for explanations of domestic violence, especially for population subgroups. Negative social modeling and the role of social forces are discussed as rival hypotheses to disinhibition theories of substance abuse and family violence amongst minority women who seek emergency shelter.