FAQ

For the most part, research articles are good faith attempts to estimate the truth; but it is important to understand the process of conducting and publishing research and the limitations inherent to this process.

When we talk about academic research, we mean research that gets published in “peer-reviewed” journals. Unlike many other forms of publishing, peer review involves submitted manuscripts being scrutinized by other experts in the field. It is the job of these other experts (the “reviewers”) to find weaknesses and recommend improvements. This process captures some errors, but it does not make the articles perfect. Fortunately, there are some simple ways to make sure you don’t overestimate research articles, and this starts by recognizing some limitations.

The biggest limitation to keep in mind is that research (in this subfield at least) usually examines human behaviour in unusual environments (like a lab). Researchers attempt to connect their work to the real world, but there will always be some real-life nuance lost in lab tasks.

The second biggest limitation comes from the way researchers quantify their work. When we observe human behaviour and turn those observations into numbers and scores, we lose even more real-life nuance. Researchers are aware of this and they have lively debates about how best to improve our research and understanding. No amount of psychological research can “prove” anything; it can only show varying levels of support (or evidence) for or against a phenomenon.

The definitions are a little bit messy, but generally speaking:

Violence is action intending to cause serious harm. Usually, only the infliction of physical harm is considered violence. For example, punching someone in the face.

Aggression is any behaviour directed towards another person that is intended (or could be expected to) cause harm or distress. This includes actions with a low risk of actual harm (e.g. raising one’s voice) and high risk of actual harm (e.g. a punch). For this reason, when reading a research paper about ‘aggression’ it’s important to examine what measure of aggression is used. 

Abuse is a pattern of violence and/or aggression.

Because it depends who you ask and how you measure it. Research suggests that ‘generally violent’ people (those who exhibit violence in many different contexts) are fundamentally different from ‘situationally violent’ people (those who exhibit violence only in a specific context, usually in the home and/or with an intimate partner). We will address each case separately.

Are men more ‘generally violent’ than women? In short, yes. Rates of violent crime perpetration are much, much higher in men. However, ‘aggression’ and ‘violence’ are not interchangeable terms. Men are more likely to use ‘overt’ aggression (like physical aggression and or violence if severe enough), and women are more likely to use ‘relational’ aggression (like deliberately damaging someone’s reputation or relationship). The observation that women are more likely to use relational aggression has been used to challenge the view that men are always more aggressive than women. However, it does not change the fact that men are more likely to cause physical injury. This fact is reflected in violent crime rates (such as the UN’s report that ~90% of all homicides are committed by men).

Are men more ‘situationally aggressive’ (or violent) than women? It depends on how you measure it. If you measure violence by severity of outcome, men are more situationally violent (request text here). If you measure aggression by how often men and women engage in any aggressive act, rates appear to be roughly equal with some sources suggesting that women engage in more aggression than men (in the UK and North America, at least) (see here). If you want to read more about this distinction, we have a page on it here.

The bottom line: The role of gender in aggression is complex and controversial. We work with all genders and we focus on factors that can effect everyone, such as emotion, stress, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), etc.

The research suggests that people who experienced domestic violence in childhood are more likely to engage in violence in adulthood, but most of these young people do not become violent offenders.

This question concerns what researchers call “the intergenerational transmission of violence” or “the cycle of violence.” There are decades of research that aims to answer this question spanning different geographic regions, time periods, youths’ ages, definitions of abuse, and the assessment technique. All of this research suggests that childhood maltreatment increases the risk of violence later in life. However, this does not mean that all (or even most) maltreated children become violent adults (this review is unfortunately not open source, but you can request a copy of the chapter from the authors through ResearchGate). For instance, one study found that about 30% of individuals exposed to domestic violence in childhood engage in domestic violence in adulthood (which is considerably higher than the control group rates but still nowhere near 100%).

Many factors seem to contribute to violence in adulthood, and previous experience with violence is only one such factor. If a child has been exposed to domestic violence, many positive or “protective” factors can decrease the likelihood of violence. For instance, having a strong, healthy relationship with a non-abusive caring adult increases the likelihood of positive adult adjustment in children exposed to domestic violence. You can read more about protective factors in this review of academic research.

There are generally six main parts of an article the present in the following order: 

Title: this should give an idea of what the paper is about and/or what the findings are 

Abstract: The abstract is designed to give an overview of the paper and should allow a reader to decide if they want to read the whole paper or not.

Introduction: this should outline why the current paper was done: what previous work has shown, what outstanding questions remain, and why the current paper addresses one or more of those questions. This can provide useful context.

Methods: should allow a technical understanding of how the research was conducted. This will tell you how violence and aggression were measured, which has a big impact on how useful you will find the results.

Results: what was found. This might be quite technical and statistics heavy, but the discussion should interpret the results further.

Discussion: should elaborate on what the results mean and what can/can’t be concluded from them. Should also discuss any limitations of the current study.  

Generally speaking, research can fall into the category of either qualitative or quantitative. Put simply, qualitative research is that in which “data” (the stuff we use as evidence) is non-numeric. Often qualitative data will be quotes from focus groups or interviews, observations, or cultural records (i.e., texts, folk lore, etc.). In contrast, quantitative research is that in which data is numeric (i.e., height, age, scores on a test, etc.).

While qualitative and quantitative researchers often use similar techniques, they record and analyze their data differently. For example, two researchers might interview a group of people about their opinions of a political candidate. The qualitative researcher may record information like quotes, observations about the person’s disposition, and themes that came up in the interview. The quantitative researcher might record the number of time the interviewee uses  negative words (from a predetermined list), scores on a behaviour/emotional observation coding system, and a self-report at the end asking the interviewee to rate their overall impressions of the candidate on a numeric scale. Both these researchers are trying to learn the same information (how does the community feel about this politician?), but they are approaching the problem in different ways.

Some researchers use a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques as they both have their place in research. For example, qualitative research allows us to record and then present information while keeping it as true to the original as possible (i.e., someone’s quote is presented as a quote), but it is hard to make predictions without some statistics. In contrast, quantitative research can be used to explain and predict certain things if we have enough data, but it turns quotes into numbers and in so doing, it loses a lot of nuance.