Intimate partner violence (IPV), which refers to any behavior by a current or former intimate partner that causes or intends to cause physical, psychological, or sexual harm, is highly prevalent with one in two women experiencing some form of IPV in their lifetime (Leemis et al., 2022). Theoretical and empirical evidence links substance use with IPV perpetration (Cafferky et al., 2018, Chermack and Giancola, 1997, Moore and Stuart, 2005, Shorey et al., 2018, Shorey et al., 2016). However, limited research has examined patterns of substance use in relation to patterns of IPV perpetration. It is important to bear in mind that the onus is on the individual not to perpetrate IPV and that substance use does not diminish this responsibility (that is, the perpetration of IPV should not be excused due to diminished decision-making capacity when acutely intoxicated). Yet, understanding the role of substance use in IPV is important to help inform prevention and intervention efforts. Specifically, an increased understanding of which specific substance use patterns increase the likelihood of specific patterns of IPV perpetration may ultimately inform the development of more precise interventions by allowing greater nuance in targeting potential precipitating factors.

Substance use, and alcohol use in particular, is commonly implicated in aggressive behavior and IPV perpetration (Duke et al., 2018, Kulak et al., 2025, Leonard and Quigley, 2017). With respect to alcohol use, alcohol myopia theory (AMT) and the I3 (i.e., instigation-impellance-inhibition) theory have been put forth to explain this association. AMT suggests that the pharmacological effects of alcohol taxes one’s cognitive resources, leading to impairment in cognitive processing and limited ability to respond to environmental stimuli (Giancola et al., 2010, Steele and Josephs, 1990). That is, alcohol impairs inhibitory control, which subsequently increases aggressive behavior (Eckhardt et al., 2015, Giancola and Corman, 2007, Giancola et al., 2011). I3 theory suggests that alcohol inhibits the ability to resist the urge to behave aggressively in the presence of an instigatory cue for aggression (Birkley and Eckhardt, 2019, Finkel and Hall, 2018). Relatively less is known, however, regarding the effects of cannabis and other drugs when used alone or concurrently on IPV perpetration. Meta-analytic reviews suggest that cannabis use is a correlate of IPV (Moore et al., 2008), though this link is relatively weaker than the alcohol-IPV link (Johnson et al., 2017). Among both men arrested for IPV perpetration and couples recruited from the community, cannabis use is associated with greater use of physical and psychological aggression, even after controlling for the effects of alcohol consumption (Shorey et al., 2018). Finally, while largely not specific to IPV perpetration, a body of literature suggests that effects of substance use on aggressive behavior may persist the following day – research in animal models has found increased aggressive responses in the context of alcohol withdrawal and hangover (Hwa et al., 2015), and mounting evidence suggests that withdrawal from cannabis and other drugs is associated with increased aggressive behavior (Boles and Miotto, 2003, Lee et al., 2014, Tomlinson et al., 2016). Cannabis withdrawal, in particular, has been linked to an increased likelihood of IPV perpetration among those with a history of IPV perpetration (Smith et al., 2013). Overall, research examining the effects of the use of drugs other than alcohol and cannabis, and examining patterns of substance use (i.e., use of alcohol or cannabis alone, co-use of alcohol and cannabis, and use of other drugs) in relation to patterns of IPV perpetration have been limited.

A further limitation of previous research examining the effects of various substance use patterns on IPV perpetration has been the reliance on retrospective assessments that aggregate across contexts and time (Choi et al., 2022, Kulak et al., 2025), with notable exceptions, focused mainly on alcohol-cannabis co-use (Shorey et al., 2016). Experience sampling methodologies (ESM), such as daily diaries, involve repeatedly sampling current experiences in participants' natural environments (Shiffman et al., 2008). ESM is less subject to memory decay, distortion, and heuristic bias (Shiffman et al., 2008, Stone et al., 2007, Stone and Shiffman, 1994), thus enhancing the ecological validity of findings. The use of ESM allows for examining within-person relations and avoids the ecological fallacy where data, because they have been aggregated for a group, misrepresent the experiences of individuals in that group (Robinson, 2009). Previous work has found that within- and between-person relations can differ in both magnitude and direction (Tennen and Affleck, 1996, Tennen et al., 2003). Thus, by leveraging ESM data, the present study provides a more precise and ecologically valid examination of whether women’s partner’s substance use patterns differentially influence their partner’s IPV perpetration patterns using 90 days of daily data. We examine both concurrent (i.e., partner’s substance use and IPV perpetration on the same day) and lagged models (i.e., whether IPV perpetration on one day is influenced by partner substance use the preceding day to evaluate potential temporal ordering of effects). These analyses are largely exploratory and preliminary in nature and aim to guide the development of future research hypotheses; thus, we do not have specific a priori hypotheses regarding specific patterns of findings among substance use and IPV patterns. While we generally expect alcohol use to be associated with an increased likelihood of IPV perpetration based on extant literature highlighting the influence of alcohol on aggressive behaviors and IPV, neither theory nor evidence exist to support the generation of other more specific hypotheses.