The CIRCLES Study

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The CIRCLES Study

A series of studies called the CIRCLE (Children, Intimate Relationships, and Conflictual Life Events) studies were designed to examine the immediate context of aggressive behavior and the co-occurrence of inter-parental and parent-to-child aggression, including within-incident, cross-dyad aggression spillover (i.e., the direct transfer of aggression from one family dyad to another family dyad within distinct incidents of aggression).

The original CIRCLE study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), 1R21HD067598 (PI: Marshall). This study primarily aimed to develop and validate the CIRCLE interview as a measure of the context of incidents of family aggression and cross-dyad aggression spillover. Participant recruitment and data collection efforts were leveraged from an existing community sample of couples who completed the Family Foundations RCT (PI: Feinberg) during and immediately after pregnancy. Parents completed the CIRCLE interview when their first-born child was 2.5 – 3.5 years of age. We continue to follow the families now that children are 7 years of age, allowing us to examine the impact of exposure to family violence over the course of development.

Because the original CIRCLE study was conducted among generally low-risk families, we then conducted the CIRCLE II study among low-income Pennsylvania families with a child 3-5 years of age. This study was funded by the Penn State Criminal Justice Research Center and the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State University. It was designed to address questions posed in Alex Mattern and Jen Wong’s dissertations, examine the presence and role of firearms in incidents of family violence, and provide pilot data for the current CIRCLES study.

The Children, Intimate Relationships, Conflictual Life Events, and Stress (CIRCLES) Study is focused on the role of stress (primarily traumatic stress) in incidents of family aggression. This study began in July 2019 and is funded by the National Institutes of Health, NICHD, 1R01HD098172 (PI: Marshall). This study builds upon prior CIRCLE studies with the contributions of Pittsburgh area Head Start families. Study aims additionally include testing modifications to assessment procedures (every four weeks for six months), considering the occurrence of aggression among siblings, contextual impacts on children, and examination of how traumatic stress interacts with a variety of forms of contextual threat to predict sequences of aggressive behavior.

CIRCLES Study Publications

Taverna, E. & Marshall, A. D. (in press). Development and validation of the Moral Outcomes of Relational Aggression Scale (MORALS): A measure of moral distress following intimate partner violence perpetration. Aggressive Behavior.

Lee, J-K., Marshall, A. D., Feinberg, J. E. (2022). Parent-to-child aggression, intimate partner aggression, conflict resolution, and children’s social-emotional competence in early childhood. Family Process, 61, 823-840.

Wong, J. D., Marshall, A. D., & Feinberg, M. E. (2021). Intimate partner aggression during the early parenting years: The role of dissatisfaction with division of labor and childcare. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 10, 1-16.

Marshall, A. D., Feinberg, M. E., & Daly, K. A. (2019). Children’s emotional and behavioral reactions to interparental aggression: The role of exposure to within-incident, cross-dyad aggression spillover. Journal of Family Psychology, 33, 617-628.

Marshall, A. D., Roettger, M. E., Mattern, A. C., Feinberg, M. E., & Jones, D. E. (2018). Trauma exposure and aggression towards partners and children: Differential contextual influences of fear and anger. Journal of Family Psychology, 32, 710-721.

Marshall, A. D., Feinberg, M. E., Jones, D. E., & Chote, D. R. (2017). The Children, Intimate Relationships, and Conflictual Life Events (CIRCLE) Interview for simultaneous measurement of intimate partner and parent to child aggression. Psychological Assessment, 29, 978-989.