What Happens Before Intimate Partner Violence? Distal and Proximal Antecedents

Although research on intimate partner violence (IPV) has emphasized the importance of building situational frameworks and
event-based research, our knowledge of the contexts surrounding IPV is particularly limited for immigrants. The present study
identifies the sequence of specific antecedents of IPV and their relationships with one another. This study is a content analysis
of online postings on an anonymous internet forum for Korean married women living in the U.S. Ninety-five postings narrating
IPV episodes from the direct experiences of the posters were selected. With a novel method named the “might-cause chain,”
violence was extracted from the narratives and then traced back to prior actions. Results suggest that environmental settings
of IPV can be expanded from immediate proximal situations (triggers), through contingent pathways, to distal context. The
roles of verbal exchange, alcohol, in-laws, and self-control, and the patterns of demand interactions, IPV cycles or continuums,
and dispute-related violence are discussed.