Intimate partner violence among couples in 10 DHS countries: Predictors and health outcomes

TLDR

The study reports prevalence of intimate partner violence among married or cohabiting women in 10 developing countries, identifies couple characteristics associated with physical or sexual IPV, and examines its association with reproductive, nutritional, and child health outcomes. Using Demographic and Health Survey data from 10 countries, the authors analyze women aged 20‑44, restricting violence correlates to couples with both partners interviewed while health outcome analyses include all partnered women.

Abstract

The goals of this study are threefold: 1) To report the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) among currently married or cohabiting women in 10 developing countries; 2) To identify key characteristics in each country including couple characteristics associated with experiencing physical or sexual IPV; and 3) To describe the association between womens experience of IPV and selected reproductive nutritional and child health outcomes. This report analyzes data from 10 recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS): Bangladesh (2004) Bolivia (2003/2004) the Dominican Republic (2002) Haiti (2005) Kenya (2003) Malawi (2004) Moldova (2005) Rwanda (2005) Zambia (2001/2002) and Zimbabwe (2005/2006). The first part of this report provides prevalence estimates of violence experienced by women within couples who were in marital or cohabiting partnerships at the time of the DHS survey. Next this report uses characteristics of both women and their husbands/cohabiting partners and characteristics of their relationship household and community to evaluate which currently partnered women are most at risk. The final part of the report looks at health outcomes potentially related to womens experience of IPV. The report focuses on currently married or cohabiting women age 20-44. In addition the correlates of violence analysis is restricted to couples in which both partners were interviewed; this restriction does not however apply to the section on the analysis of health outcomes.