Journal of Family Violence, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2000 The Clinical Utility of Batterer Typologies Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, 1,3 Mathew T. Huss, 2 and Sandra Ramsey Domestic violence research has increasingly focused on the identification of batterer subgroups. Although typologies have been proposed using the utility of both empirical and theoretical methodologies, studies comparing empiri- cally derived and theoretically based typology solutions have not been con- ducted. To what degree mental health practitioners can successfully classify batterers into subgroups is also not known. To address these questions, data were gathered from 49 male batterers who were treated for domestic violence in an outpatient mental health facility. A preliminary comparison of an empirically derived and a theoretically based typology solution revealed that many batterers were classified differently by the two strategies, although the overall grouping strategies were similar in content. Further, mental health professionals had substantial difficulty choosing which of the cluster analyti- cally created subgroups into which to sort individual batterer’s MMPI profile. Finally, different treatment efficacy indicators differentiated among the men in the two subtyping systems, suggesting that each system offers unique clinical information. KEY WORDS: batterer typologies; domestic violence; clinical utility. It has been proposed that understanding and delineating batterer sub- types will increase the effectiveness of domestic violence interventions (Gondolf, 1997). For example, Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (1994) spec- ulated that batterers with antisocial personality disorder and a history of 1 University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 2 The second author was supported as a predoctoral fellow by a NIMH Training grant, A Training Grant in Mental Health and Justice Systems Research (5 T32 MH16156) during the preparation of this manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge Ron Felton and First Step. Their support made this work possible. 3 Correspondence about this article should be addressed to Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, 385 Life Sciences Building, Psychology Department, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama 36688-0002. e-mail address: jlr@usamail.usouthal.edu. 37 0885-7482/00/0300-0037$18.00/0  2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation