A nationwide school-based study of violence in Brazil (PeNSE, 2015)

The study aims to describe victimization for domestic violence (DV), knife-related violence (KV), firearm-related violence (FV) and sexual violence (SV). This was a nationwide Brazilian survey with school-based interviews. All 9th grade students from public and private schools in Brazil were invited to participate. The sampling process was at random and cluster-based and performed in three stages: municipalities, schools, and classrooms. Univariate, bivariate and multivariate analyses were carried out considering the sample weights. A total of 100,540 individuals were assessed and the prevalence of victimization for DV, KV, FV and SV was 14.5%, 7.9%, 5.7% and 4.0%, respectively. The DV was more frequent in the South-eastern region, FV was more frequent in the Central-Western region and the KV and SV were more frequent in the Northern region. The victimization for DV and SV was higher among the girls, while the FV and KV were greater among the boys. All forms of victimization were more frequent among public school students, among those at age 16 or older, for those whose mothers have a lower educational level and those who have used alcohol or illegal drugs.