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Nonpatient responses to five major adjustment scales were examined at three time-points, two weeks apart. There was no evidence for a systematic increase in adjustment scores due to completing the instruments. Internal consistency coefficients and test-retest stability coefficients for the five adjustment scales show them to have utility for assessing patient groups. Only the SCL-90 showed promise for allowing reliable assessment of individual change over time. All five scales significantly discriminate patient groups from groups of nonpatients. Further research is needed to clarify present results, to determine the clinical significance of various magnitude changes on the scales, and to develop more specific measures of adjustment and symptomatology.

Impulsiveness has become a key concept in thinking about the determinants of violence and aggression. In this study of spouse abusers, the relationship between impulsiveness, impulsive aggression, and physical violence is confirmed. Impulsiveness and impulsive aggression have significant correlations with physical aggression. Impulsiveness and impulsive aggression are also correlated with measures of Borderline Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. In addition, the measures of Borderline and Antisocial Personality Disorder (PD) are significantly correlated with physical aggression. The violent and non-violent groups differed on impulsive aggression and on Borderline Personality Disorder. A partial replication of Tweed and Dutton's findings (1998) revealed sub-groups of high- and low-violence men. The high-violence group was very different from the low-violent and the non-violent groups. The high-violence group had higher pathology scores on all clinical scales, except Mania, of the Personality Assessment Inventory. These findings have implications for violence prediction and for treatment of violent men.

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