This study is among the first attempts to address a frequently articulated, yet unsubstantiated claim that sample inclusion criterion based on women's physical aggression or victimization will yield different distributions of severity and type of partner violence and injury. Independent samples of African-American women participated in separate studies based on either inclusion criterion of women's physical aggression or victimization. Between-groups comparisons showed that samples did not differ in physical, sexual, or psychological aggression; physical, sexual, or psychological victimization; inflicted or sustained injury. Therefore, inclusion criterion based on physical aggression or victimization did not yield unique samples of "aggressors" and "victims."Correspondence should be sent to Tami P. Sullivan, Ph.D., Division of Prevention and Community Research and The Consultation Center, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, 389 Whitney Ave, New Haven, CT, 06511, phone: 203.789.7645, or tami.sullivan@yale.edu. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptViolence Against Women. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 November 1. In the field of research on intimate partner violence (IPV), there is growing interest in women's use of aggression as well as their experiences of victimization (Cook & Goodman, 2006;McHugh & Frieze, 2006;Straus, 2006;Swan & Snow, 2006). Studies that focus on both women's aggression and/or their victimization often utilize non-probabilistic sampling designs (e.g., convenience sampling) (see meta-analyses by Archer, 2000Archer, , 2002. Within nonprobabilistic sampling designs, the primary inclusion criterion typically has been either women's physical aggression or their physical victimization. Little attention has been given, however, to these different inclusion criteria and the characteristics of the resulting samples. Given differences in inclusion criteria, a fundamental methodological question exists: does employing the inclusion criterion of women's aggression versus their victimization result in statistically different distributions of demographic characteristics and measures of physical, sexual, and psychological IPV and injury in these two samples?Answers to the aforementioned question have important research and practical implications. First, regarding research implications, findings would affect the ways in which results of research on IPV are interpreted. Results of research with aggression or victimization as the main inclusion criterion may yield study participant samples that are more similar to each other than previously expected, given that women's physical aggression and victimization are highly correlated (Anderson, 2002;Hamberger, 2005;Sullivan, Meese, Swan, Mazure, & Snow, 2005). If so, there may be greater external validity in a given study than previously thought regardless of which inclusion criterion was used. If the samples do not differ significantly, investigators and others might then need to interpret IPV study findings based on a dif...

Ethanol treatment significantly reduced the mass of the cerebral cortex in peri-adolescent (-3.1%), but not adult, treated mice. By contrast, ethanol significantly reduced the length of the corpus callosum in adult (-5.4%), but not peri-adolescent, treated mice. Future studies at the histological level may yield additional details concerning ethanol and the peri-adolescent brain.