Correspondence between telephone and written assessments of physical violence in marriage

Clinic couples (N = 50) participated in a study examining the consistency of reported rates of aggression via telephone and written administrations of the Conflict Tactics Scale. Both husbands' and wives' reports of physical aggression were highly consistent between the telephone and written assessments. Reports of wife-to-husband aggression were significantly more consistent than reports of husband-to-wife aggression. As expected, wives reported significantly more husband-to-wife aggression than their husbands reported. Generally, there were no significant sex differences on reports of wife-to-husband aggression. The implications of these findings for various studies are discussed.