ABSTRACT
This chapter defines domestic and intimate partner violence as a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over the other. Patterns of abusive behaviors include physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions – including threats – that influence another person. A major portion of this chapter evaluates the potential of various data sources to inform our understanding of the extent of domestic violence. The chapter presents a variety of facts related to domestic and intimate partner violence and ways to evaluate their validity, accuracy and reliability. These sources reflect both official and unofficial measures, including self-report surveys, family violence surveys, national violence against women surveys, national crime victimization surveys, uniform crime reports, national incident-based reports and UCR supplemental homicide reports, among others.
