Department of Computer and Data Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Pac Symp Biocomput. 2021;26:79-90.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an important social and public health problem, affecting millions of women worldwide. Violence in a relationship can occur in multiple ways, including physical violence, psychological aggression, and sexual violence. In this study, utilizing data from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), we comprehensively investigate the interplay between physical, psychological, and sexual violence, in terms of their co-occurrence patterns, their relation to trauma symptoms and overall health of victims. For this purpose, we perform network analysis and develop a visualization technique that enables in-depth navigation of the three-dimensional (physical, psychological, sexual) space of violence. Our findings show that physical violence tends to significantly co-occur with psychological abuse, and violence intensifies when both are present. We also find that sexual violence tends to overlap less with other types of violence, particularly with physical violence. Milder forms of psychological abuse are prominent in the population and seem to represent a separate type of abuse (micro-aggression) in terms of its occurrence patterns. Finally, we observe that trauma symptoms and health problems tend to be reported more by survivors at the presence of intense psychological aggression. Our findings can be useful in developing treatments that target different patterns of IPV.
亲密伴侣暴力（IPV）是一个重要的社会和公共卫生问题，影响着全球数以百万计的女性。伴侣关系中的暴力可以以多种方式发生，包括身体暴力、心理攻击和性暴力。在这项研究中，我们利用全国亲密伴侣和性暴力调查（NISVS）的数据，全面研究了身体、心理和性暴力之间的相互作用，包括它们的共同发生模式、与受害者创伤症状和整体健康的关系。为此，我们进行了网络分析，并开发了一种可视化技术，能够深入探索暴力的三维（身体、心理、性）空间。我们的研究结果表明，身体暴力往往与心理虐待显著相关，而且当两者同时存在时，暴力会加剧。我们还发现，性暴力与其他类型的暴力重叠较少，特别是与身体暴力。轻度的心理虐待在人群中很普遍，从发生模式来看，它似乎代表了一种单独的虐待类型（微侵犯）。最后，我们观察到，在强烈的心理攻击存在的情况下，创伤症状和健康问题更有可能被幸存者报告。我们的研究结果可以为针对不同模式的 IPV 开发治疗方法提供有用的信息。
