Important to the general understanding of crime is whether partner assaults have the same etiology as nonintimate assaults. This study examined partner assault among 653 college students from a small northeastern university and investigated the extent to which partner assaults were part of a more general pattern of criminal behavior or a specialized type of crime. The study included the measures of partner assault, criminal history scale, social desirability scale, and socioeconomic status scale. Logistic regression was used as the main test of the hypothesized relationships between criminal history and assaulting a partner. The results revealed a high prevalence of partner assault or 32 percent, which is consistent with many other studies of dating violence. A high prevalence of prior crime was also found, which is consistent with other studies of self-reported crime in general population samples. The links found between other crime and partner assault suggest that a general propensity to crime is an important part of the etiology of this type of assault. Hence, partner assault is not as unique a category of crime as might be thought. The results contribute to an understanding of intimate partner assault and to more general issues in criminology. Tables and references