Christopher T Allen | University of Massachusetts, Lowell (original) (raw)

Christopher T Allen

Address: Lowell, Massachusetts, United States

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Background and Purpose In response to high intimate partner violence prevalence rates among colle... more Background and Purpose In response to high intimate partner violence prevalence rates among college students, schools across the country have increased their efforts to prevent men’s perpetration of violence against women. To date, research examining the efficacy of these programs indicates that they are successful in reducing men’s violence-accepting attitudes and may even reduce men’s behavioral intentions to commit violence. However, the violence prevention field has yet to address the issue of men’s under-representation in prevention efforts. Only a minority of men are violent, and recently prevention advocates have stressed the importance of engaging non-violent men in ending violence against women. Non-violent men can have an influence on the culture and environment that perpetuates men’s violence against women by challenging and ultimately changing the social norms that support it. Though the number of violence prevention interventions for college men has recently increased, ...

Among men’s studies scholars, violence is a major focus of attention. Research findings of the pa... more Among men’s studies scholars, violence is a major focus of attention. Research findings of the past two decades indicate that violence is gendered, and can only be understood in the context of gender inequality. And though contemporary theories on men and violence have rejected the notion that violence is a necessary result of being male, the field continues to struggle with the need for a more contextual understanding of men’s relationship to violence. Drawing from Descriptive Psychology and existing paradigms for studying gender and violence, I argue that conceptualizing gender as a status that confers eligibility to engage in some social practices rather than others holds promising potential for explicating masculinity’s relationship to intimate partner violence.

Journal of interpersonal violence, Jan 9, 2014

Court-mandated domestic violence (DV) treatment programs across the country have seen a marked in... more Court-mandated domestic violence (DV) treatment programs across the country have seen a marked increase in female clients. These programs use a variety of measurement tools to assess the needs of their clients. Increased numbers of women in treatment for DV reflect a need to address the measurement of intimate partner violence (IPV) for both males and females. Unfortunately, the reliability and validity of many of measures used to assess IPV and related constructs for women remains unknown. The current study focuses on a particular measure, the Propensity for Abusiveness Scale (PAS). The PAS is not a measure of abusive behavior per se; rather, it assesses risk factors for abuse, including affective lability, anger expression, trauma symptoms, and harsh parenting experienced by the respondent. Specifically, the current study compares the factor structure and the measurement properties of the PAS for males and females in a sample of 885 (647 female, 238 male) participants in a DV trea...