New Perspectives on Measuring Interpersonal Violence

Dear Colleagues,

Interpersonal violence (IV) is widespread worldwide, particularly against women and girls. Globally, 33% of women experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, with half of it classified as domestic-abuse-related violence. IV is recognized as a public health issue by the World Health Organization, and it is estimated that effective violence and abuse prevention could reduce mental health problems by a quarter in the general population.

However, the harm from violence is disproportionately distributed across genders. Violence against women and girls is a major cause and consequence of gender and health inequalities. However, the gendered nature of violence is not visible in most violence statistics (administrative or surveys), mostly due to the ways data are collected or analyzed. Addressing violence through impactful prevention and intervention requires a robust measurement of violence, mainstreaming gender and other intersecting dimensions of social relations (such as the relationship between victim and perpetrator, race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status/class) into analyses.

The identification and measurement of violence has proved to be challenging, though, particularly around definitions, thresholds, and measures of the extent and nature of violence such as its seriousness, duration, frequency, units of measurement, and other technical and counting issues. For example, capturing some types/forms of intimate partner violence such as economic abuse, emotional or psychological abuse, and even reproductive abuse and coercive control are harder than the generally well measured physical and sexual types and are often missed. When they are included in the surveys, the reliability and validity of these measures are contested.

In some administrative data collected by official bodies (such as health records), violence is not visible or even quantified. When it is visible, it might not be consistently recorded or contain enough details. For example, information on the severity and frequency is usually missed. This is further complicated when different agencies use different ways of measuring violence. Police, general practices, and hospitals count episodes and consultations, while specialised services count victims/survivors. The justice system has concepts based on crime, but the crime surveys and other population-based surveys use a different scaling of seriousness.

This Special Issue will bring together researchers and academics in the field of violence to share their insights about challenges in and solutions to measuring gender-related violence. 

Dr. Ladan Hashemi
Dr. Ruth Weir
Guest Editors

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