Co-occurrence Patterns of Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an important social and public health problem, affecting millions of women worldwide. Violence in a relationship can occur in multiple ways, including physical violence, psychological aggression, and sexual violence. In this study, utilizing data from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), we comprehensively investigate the interplay between physical, psychological, and sexual violence, in terms of their co-occurrence patterns, their relation to trauma symptoms and overall health of victims. For this purpose, we perform network analysis and develop a visualization technique that enables in-depth navigation of the three-dimensional (physical, psychological, sexual) space of violence. Our findings show that physical violence tends to significantly co-occur with psychological abuse, and violence intensifies when both are present. We also find that sexual violence tends to overlap less with other types of violence, particularly with physical violence. Milder forms of psychological abuse are prominent in the population and seem to represent a separate type of abuse (micro-aggression) in terms of its occurrence patterns. Finally, we observe that trauma symptoms and health problems tend to be reported more by survivors at the presence of intense psychological aggression. Our findings can be useful in developing treatments that target different patterns of IPV.