I have been reanalyzing the Straus & Gelles National Surveys of Family Violence (1975 & 1985) using theory and methods associated with Social Network analysis. This approach permits the simultaneous estimates of the overall pattern of aggression in families (using log-linear & latent structure techniques). The research so far has focused on the estimation of inter-generational effects in transmitting family aggression. Interestingly, vulnerability as well as some perpetration effects have been found. The findings from this research will have implications for how family violence is conceptualized; changing the focus to a distinct structural (sociological) focus on the emergence of different patterns of violence within families. My Spring 2001 sabbatical leave will be devoted to applying the Social Network approach to the problem of family violence and to test the models developed using more recent epidemiological national surveys.

I am maintaining and analyzing several databases on the rates of criminal violence. The first product of this research was a dynamic structural equation modeling the changing rates of crime, unemployment, and imprisonment over a 50 year period in the U.S. Recently, I have begun studying the patterns of crime and violence in the Chicago Suburbs. I supervised a Master’s Thesis by Kevin Strahs that analyzed the levels and changes in criminal violence in the Chicago suburbs from 1980 to 1990.