Intimate Partner Violence Against Women: Survivor’s Report on Well-Being and Perpetrator’s Attributions

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against women persists as a critical public health and human rights issue, demanding nuanced understanding of its impacts and underlying dynamics. We performed cross-sectional, quantitative and qualitative, analyses on an online questionnaire from a snowball sample of 326 women aged 18 and above. Participants, defined as IPV-exposed (N = 202) and unexposed (N = 124), rated their well-being at the beginning and end of a relationship, based on 19 factors. Exposed women identified examples of the perpetrator's attributions following violent episodes, which were analyzed and themed. No statistically significant disparity in well-being was observed between exposed and unexposed groups at the onset of the relationships. The trajectory of well-being then clearly diverged as the relationship progressed. Positive factors contributing to exposed women's well-being declined, while negative factors increased, contrary to unexposed women. Three themes were found in the perpetrators' attributions: (1) her personality traits and behavior (56%), (2) perpetrator's external factors in life (33%), and (3) his distorted norms (11%). The results support and add to previous research on how to approach survivors as well as perpetrators of IPV.