Where Do 'Domestic Violence' Statistics Come From and Why Do They Vary So Much?

Domestic Violence and Healthy Marriage advocates often appear to contradict each other when they report statistics on the levels and nature of intimate partner conflict. This research brief helps clarify some of the misunderstandings, errors and apparent contradictions which derive from treating domestic violence as a single phenomenon. It discusses the survey biases associated with collecting information about violence in the home and the sampling errors regarding agency data. The author relates these issues to the different types of intimate partner violence that scholars have begun to identify over the past decade. The brief was initially prepared for a conference co-sponsored by the NHMRC and the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV) on May 13-15, 2009, at the Airlie Conference Center.