Single Incidents or Patterns of Control? Researcher-Practitioner Differences in Screening for Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has long been recognized as a pervasive and urgent problem. Yet, there is no consensus on what constitutes IPV, and screening practices vary widely across professional domains. Whereas many researchers approach IPV as potentially bidirectional, and assessment tools in research and emergency healthcare often categorize any violence within a romantic partnership as IPV, antiviolence advocates tend to conceptualize IPV as a pattern of controlling behaviors. We engage Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism to explore the complexity of IPV and how professionals screening for “the same” phenomenon may classify individuals (participants, patients, or clients) and relationships differently. This variation is particularly important for applied researchers. Those who conceptualize IPV as being potentially bidirectional may classify some individuals as “victim-perpetrators” who would otherwise be classified solely as “survivors” or “perpetrators” by antiviolence advocates. Those who conceptualize any incident of violence as constituting IPV may classify a number of individuals as victims or perpetrators, and a number of relationships as abusive, that would screen as non-IPV in many advocacy contexts. This limits the capacity of research to substantively inform practitioners’ efforts to address what they conceptualize and subsequently operationalize as IPV.