Evaluating Attribution of Responsibility and Minimization by Male Batterers: Implications for Batterer Programs

Men arrested and condemned for intimate partner violence assaults tend to use external attributions to justify their behavior and tend to minimize the severity of their violent acts. Responsibility assumption is one of the main goals in many batterer programs because it could facilitate behavioral changes and reduce the dropout rate. In the current study, first we aim to create two scales to assess attribution of responsibility and minimization of incidents of partner violence, and second, to classify batterers based on their levels of minimization and their attributions of responsibility. Participants were 119 male batterers attending to the first assessment session of a court mandated batterer intervention program in the community. The analyses showed appropriate psychometric characteristics for both scales. The scores obtained allowed us to identify two types of participants in the study.