[13][14] The National Institute of Justice cautions that the CTS may not be appropriate for IPV research "because it does not measure control, coercion, or the motives for conflict tactics.
"[15] The scales are based on the premise that conflict is an inevitable aspect of all human association, but that the use of coercion (including force and violence) as a conflict-resolution tactic is harmful.
"[18] A CTS-based study would ideally include data from respondents and their partners/primary caregivers in order to investigate the degree of symmetry or asymmetry between their responses.
[19] Each of these behaviors, or "items", is divided into five categories: "Negotiation", "Psychological Aggression", "Physical Assault", "Sexual Coercion" and "Injury."
[2][3][5][6][21] Common scoring methods include: Critics of the CTS argue it is an ineffective tool with which to measure IPV rate because, although it counts the number of acts of violence, it does not provide information about the context in which such acts occur (including the initiation, intention, history, or pattern of violence).
It is more akin to a teacher who doesn't look at how far off the spelling mistakes are or whether there is a pattern in the mistakes that might point to a physiological problem like dyslexia or some other learning disability, as compared to academic laziness, and thus leaving the learning problems untouched and misdirecting funds away from towards punitive after-school programs for lazy students.
[26][27] Furthermore, the CTS asks about frequency only in the past twelve months and fails to detect ongoing systematic patterns of abuse.
[29] Another methodological problem is that interobserver reliability (the likelihood that the two members of the measured dyad respond similarly) is near zero for tested husband and wife couples.