Abstract
This paper uses spatial data of cases of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) to examine neighborhood-level influences on small-area variations in IPVAW risk in a police district of the city of Valencia (Spain). To analyze area variations in IPVAW risk and its association with neighborhood-level explanatory variables we use a Bayesian spatial random-effects modeling approach, as well as disease mapping methods to represent risk probabilities in each area. Analyses show that IPVAW cases are more likely in areas of high immigrant concentration, high public disorder and crime, and high physical disorder. Results also show a spatial component indicating remaining variability attributable to spatially structured random effects. Bayesian spatial modeling offers a new perspective to identify IPVAW high and low risk areas, and provides a new avenue for the design of better-informed prevention and intervention strategies.
Highlights
The serious physical, mental, and social consequences of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW), and its high prevalence worldwide, make it a major social and public health problem [1,2,3,4,5,6,7].Recently, the World Health Organization published a report considering violence against women as a “global public health problem of epidemic proportions, requiring urgent action” ([7], p. 3)
The final model selected using the DIC criterion included the percentage of immigrant population, physical disorder and policing activity as covariates, a spatial component that accounted for the spatial autocorrelation, and an unstructured random effect to control for Poisson overdispersion
In this study we used spatial data of IPVAW cases to examine neighborhood-level influences on small-area variations of IPVAW risk in a police district of the city of Valencia (Spain)
Summary
The serious physical, mental, and social consequences of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW), and its high prevalence worldwide, make it a major social and public health problem [1,2,3,4,5,6,7].Recently, the World Health Organization published a report considering violence against women as a “global public health problem of epidemic proportions, requiring urgent action” ([7], p. 3). Research has traditionally focused more on personal and situational factors, scholars are increasingly stressing the importance of a more ecological approach to understanding and preventing IPVAW, and acknowledging the influence of community and neighborhood-level variables, both as IPVAW risk and protective factors It has been long recognized the link between neighborhood-level characteristics and rates of violence (among non-intimates) in communities. This research tradition, drawing mainly from social disorganization theories, posits that characteristics of neighborhoods such as disadvantage, poverty, ethnic heterogeneity, residential instability, disorder, or diminished collective efficacy undermine social control and facilitates crime and violence [12,13,14,15,16,17,18] This ecological approach emphasizing neighborhood-level influences on violence was appealing to scholars studying violence in intimate relationships, mainly child abuse [19,20,21,22,23]. The influence of neighborhood-level variables on IPVAW is receiving increased scholarly attention [24,25,26,27,28,29,30]
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