Various sources of violence statistics pertain to multiple types of intimate partner violence, only some of which involves the coercive, controlling violence for which battered women's advocates reserve the term "domestic violence." The usefulness of various data sources can only be understood by making distinctions in types of intimate partner violence or its perpetrators. From his own research work, the author cites three major types of intimate partner violence; "intimate terrorism" is an attempt to take general control over one's partner's thinking, feeling, and behaviors; "violent resistance" is the use of violence in response to "intimate terrorism;" "situational couple violence" involves violence that is situationally provoked due to the tensions or emotions of a particular encounter in which one or both partner react with violence. Different data sources provide different access to the major types of intimate partner violence. There are two major sources of statistics on intimate partner violence: survey data and agency data. Both are biased, but in different ways. Survey data solicit self-reports on situational couple violence. Agency data, which are sometimes based on third-party reports and sometimes interviews with agency "clients," tend to obtain data on a mix of the most serious cases of all three types of intimate partner violence; however, agency data are generally dominated by cases of intimate terrorism and resistance to it. 50 references