Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence and Injuries--Washington, 1998

This paper reports on the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) and injuries in Washington State (US) in 1998. Data on the prevalence of IPV were obtained by adding questions from the Conflict Tactics Scale and the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale to the 1998 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) of the State Department of Health. Results showed that among the approximately 2113000 women aged 18 and older about 499000 (23.6%) experienced IPV during their lives and 456000 (21.6%) sustained a physical injury from IPV. For the 2049000 men approximately 336000 (16.4%) experienced IPV and about 154000 (7.5%) sustained injury from it. These findings indicate that IPV in Washington is more prevalent among women than men. In addition divorced or separated status and low education are shown to be associated with an increased risk for reported IPV. Implications for interventions and usefulness of BRFSS for collecting data on IPV are discussed.