During the research, only postindex incidents in which an act of violence occurred met our definition of domestic violence recidivism. In a small minority of cases, the criminal record indicated a charge of assault against a partner, but we did not have the police occurrence report to determine the specific acts of violence; these charges met the definition of domestic violence recidivism. The criteria we used to code postindex acts of violence were broadly based on the physical violence subscale of the Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS; Straus, 1979) or the Conflict Tactics Scales Revised (CTS2; Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, & Sugarman, 1996). We included any of the following acts as violence: held her down, threw something at her that could hurt, twisted her arm or hair, pushed or shoved her, grabbed her (includes pulled and dragged her), slapped her (includes struck her), inflicted other minor violence (e.g., shook her), punched her with fist or hit her with something that could hurt, choked her (includes grabbed her by neck or throat, put her in a headlock), slammed her against wall; "beat her up," burned or scalded her on purpose, kicked her, used a knife or gun on her (i.e., actual or attempted contact with the victim's body; includes discharging a gun while pointing it at the victim or threat of physical harm with weapon in hand), and inflicted other severe violence (e.g., picked her up and threw her, head-butted her, pushed her down the stairs, bit her). In addition, we included as violence any use of force (by any means) to coerce the victim into having sexual contact when she did not want to. The same criteria for violence are used to code prior domestic and nondomestic violence.