Citation

Levendosky AA, Bogat GA, von Eye A. Eur. Psychol. 2007; 12(1): 1-5.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

10.1027/1016-9040.12.1.1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article provides an overview to the Special Section in this issue on intimate partner violence (IPV) and children. The argument is made that the field needs to pay more attention to issues of theory, definitions, and methodology. The contributors to the Special Section each make a unique contribution to one of these topics. Their articles document that increased focus on definition and theory, methodologies involving laboratory studies, data collection at multiple time-points, person-oriented approaches, and diverse samples of children exposed to IPV will begin to increase the research sophistication of the field. We argue that the field needs comparability of definitions for the same/similar phenomena under investigation, more sophisticated, testable hypotheses, a better understanding of the short- and long-term consequences of exposure to IPV, and, finally, a more refined picture of the mechanisms by which exposure to IPV affects particular children.