Understanding family violence data

Understanding family violence data Workshop facilitator: Pauline Gulliver

Format • Background to family violence data in NZ • Population vs agency data • Some practical examples • Terminology (unravelling the mysteries of terminology) PLEASE Ask questions, Highlight your own examples

Data collection

A big problem No single agency collects/collates family violence data for New Zealand

Government agency data sources • Mortality Collection • Hospital discharge data • Police • Courts • Family Violence Death Review Committee

Purpose of administrative data sources • Monitor service use; • Determine resource requirements; • Identify improvements (efficiencies) in service delivery; • Advice and support on new legislation and legislative reform

BUT With the exception of the Family Violence Death Review Committee, none of the agencies collect “FAMILY VIOLENCE DATA”

So, what do they collect? • Data concerning: • Hospital discharge events, crimes committed, apprehensions made, Protection Order applications, cases initiated under the Domestic Violence Act (1995)/Children, Young Persons and their Families Act (1989)…

Then how is family violence data generated? • Identify the relationship between the assailant and the victim; • Count events where the majority of the cases are associated with family violence; • Flag events considered to be associated with family violence

Other problems • Definitions • Labelling • Years • Consistency • Recording/reporting • The media

Population based data • Examples: • New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey; • New Zealand Violence Against Women Survey; • Youth 2000 (2007 & 2012) Surveys

What they can provide: • Prevalence estimates of victimisation in New Zealand • Limitations • Usually limited to those aged 18-65 years; • do not provide estimates of elder abuse; • estimates of child abuse subject to recall. • Require consistent methodology over time to produce comparable results; • Subject to changing societal understanding of what constitutes violence.

Data collection

A practical example Two figures provided for Family Violence Incident Reports: 53,000 vs 41,000 • Same calendar year; • Both calendar years (not calendar vs fiscal) • Why the difference?

Occurrences vs offenses • Occurrence: May involve more than one offense; • Offense: A breach of criminal law; • Both numbers were correct: 41,000 = number of family violence incident report occurrences; 53,000 = number of family violence incident report offenses

Terminology • Be sure you understand WHAT is being reported; • If you don’t understand, go to the SOURCE (or the NZFVC) and ASK.

What do you need to know? • What is being reported: • Hospital discharges; • Occurrences or offenses (Police); • Prosecutions, convictions, sentencing (Courts); • Homicide, murder (deaths) • Over what time period? • Calendar year • Fiscal year (March vs June year end)

Proportions • An expression of the amount of discharges/crimes/convictions… that are family violence related; • Requires a numerator and a denominator; • Example, deaths attributed to family violence

Different numerator definitions; Different denominators;

Something “up my sleeve” • Prevalence • A measure of how commonly an event occurs in a population: • Usually expressed as a rate (e.g. per 100,000 people) or a percentage (8.5%) • 12 month prevalence = how commonly the event occurred in the previous 12 months; • Life-time prevalence = how commonly an event occurred at any point in the life of the population under investigation.

Incidence • The rate or occurrence of NEW events; • Number of new cases per year divided by the population at risk • Incident • An event

Understanding family violence data