ABSTRACT
Background Interpersonal violence is, in its different forms (against children, women or older adults), a clearly recognized public health problem and a basic human rights violation (Podnieks et al., 2010; WHO/INPEA, 2002). Knowledge about occurrence conditions and risk factors associated with violence constitutes an essential first step in defining a public intervention strategy. Within that context, public health actions become relevant, specifically considering their goal to promote and protect individuals’ and populations’ health (Last, 2007). Notwithstanding, research on older adult’s violence field does not yield the same development as it does on others areas of family violence. The Ageing and Violence study was conducted to estimate the prevalence of violence (physical, psychological, financial, sexual and neglect), experienced by individuals aged sixty and over in Portugal within the family context, and to analyse violence characteristics and help-seeking behaviours (Gil et al., 2014).1 Over the past five years, two European studies also focused on older adults’ violence in Portugal, albeit these studies did not encompass the same target population. The ABUEL project (Soares et al., 2010) included communitydwelling older adults of seven cities of European countries, whereas the AVOW (Luoma et al., 2011) included community-dwelling older women of five European countries. The results of the two studies reveal a wide range of prevalence rates for the different types of violence. Psychological violence was the most prevalent type in both ABUEL (21.9 per cent) and AVOW (32.4 per cent), and the least prevalent type was sexual violence in ABUEL (1.3 per cent) and physical violence in AVOW (2.8 per cent). Considering the differences in the target populations, methods of data collection (questionnaire administered in person or via postal service) and the scope of the surveys (regional or national), the dissimilar results are understandable. Other population-based prevalence studies on violence against older persons also differed in settings and study designs (Cooper, Selwood & Livingston, 2008; De Donder et al., 2011). These different research approaches impact on observed estimates, varying between 0.8 per cent in Spain (Marmolejo, 2008) and 18.4 per cent in Israel (Lowenstein, Eisikovits & Winterstein, 2009).
