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COMMENTARYThirty years of research show alcohol to be a cause of intimate partner violence: Future research needs to identify who to treat and how to treat them ABSTRACT Research over the past 30 years has demonstrated that excessive alcohol use meets all of the epidemiological criteria for causality. While neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause, excessive alcohol use does contribute to the occurrence of partner violence and that contribution is approximately equal to other contributing causes such as gender roles, anger and marital functioning. Current theories of how excessive drinking results in partner violence provide a potentially valuable framework with respect to who should be targeted for interventions with respect to alcohol-related partner violence and what those interventions should address.

Two structural equation models are presented to examine the relationship between anger and blame. In the first model, attributions of blame mediate the relationship between feelings of anger and attributions concerning the provoker's intentions to harm, his or her justification in harming, and the amount of harm done. In the second model, anger and blame exist in a reciprocal relationship. The self-reports of 158 individuals concerning an incident in which they had been harmed were analyzed using LISREL VIII. Both models showed satisfactory fit to the data; however, on the basis of theory and past research, the second model is proposed as more acceptable. Additional analyses demonstrated that interactional injustice was the most often reported type of injustice and that men were more likely to be reported as the offender than women. Implications of the research are discussed and suggestions for future research are presented.