Are Individual and Community Acceptance and Witnessing of Intimate Partner Violence Related to Its Occurrence? Multilevel Structural Equation Model
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Date
2011
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
PLoS ONE
Abstract
Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is a serious and widespread problem worldwide. Much of
the research on IPVAW focused on individual-level factors and attention has been paid to the contextual factors. The aim of
this study was to develop and test a model of individual- and community-level factors associated with IPVAW.
Methods and Findings: We conducted a (multivariate) multilevel structural equation analysis on 8731 couples nested
within 883 communities in Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey 2008. Variables included in the model were derived
from respondents’ answers to the experience of IPVAW, attitudes towards wife beating and witnessing physical violence in
childhood. We found that women that witnessed physical violence were more likely to have tolerant attitudes towards
IPVAW and women with tolerant attitudes were more likely to have reported spousal IPVAW abuse. Women with husbands
with tolerant attitudes towards IPVAW were more likely to have reported spousal abuse. We found that an increasing
proportion of women in the community with tolerant attitudes was significantly positively associated with spousal sexual
and emotional abuse, but not significantly associated with spousal physical abuse. In addition, we found that an increasing
proportion of men in the community with tolerant attitudes and an increasing proportion of women who had witnessed
physical violence in the community was significantly positively associated with spousal physical abuse, but not significantly
associated with spousal sexual and emotional abuse. There was a positive correlation between all three types of IPVAW at
individual- and community-level.
Conclusions: We found that community tolerant attitudes context in which people live is associated with exposure to
IPVAW even after taking into account individual tolerant attitudes. Public health interventions designed to reduce IPVAW
must address people and the communities in which they live in order to be successful.
Description
Keywords
Community Acceptance, Intimate Partner Violence, Multilevel Structural Equation Model
Citation
Uthman OA, Moradi T, Lawoko S (2011) Are Individual and Community Acceptance and Witnessing of Intimate Partner Violence Related to Its Occurrence? Multilevel Structural Equation Model. PLoS ONE 6(12): e27738. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027738