Postdeployment domestic violence by U.S. Army soldiers

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine whether a military deployment of 6 months predicted domestic violence against the wives of deployed and nondeployed soldiers during the postdeployment period. The method involved the completion of an anonymous questionnaire by a sample of the spouses of soldiers deployed from a large U.S. Army post. The Conflict Tactics Scale identified incidents of domestic violence by the soldier husbands, and a logistic regression model predicted domestic violence during the postdeployment period. The results indicate that deployment was not a significant predictor of domestic violence during the first 10 months of the postdeployment period. Younger wives and those who were victims of predeployment domestic violence were more likely to report postdeployment domestic violence. The conclusion was that interventions for domestic violence in the U.S. Army should address risks among younger couples and those with a previous incident of domestic violence.