title: Intimate partner violence: prevalence, types, and chronicity in adult women.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Most intimate partner violence (IPV) prevalence studies do not examine the relationships between IPV types and the chronicity and severity of abuse.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Delineate prevalence, chronicity, and severity of IPV among adult women.
  
  
  METHODS
  Retrospective cohort study conducted by telephone survey. Data were collected in 2003 to 2005 and analyzed contemporaneously.
  
  
  METHODS
  English-speaking women (n=3568) aged 18 to 64 years enrolled in a U.S. health maintenance organization for 3 or more years. Response rate was 56.4%.
  
  
  METHODS
  Physical, psychological, and sexual IPV were assessed using five questions from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey and ten items from the Women's Experience with Battering (WEB) scale.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most (3429) of the respondents had at least one intimate partnership as an adult. Of these, 14.7% reported IPV of any type in the past 5 years, and 45.1% of abused women experienced more than one type. Prevalence was 7.9% in the past year, while during a woman's adult lifetime, it was 44.0%. Depending on IPV type, 10.7% to 21.0% were abused by more than one partner; duration was <1 year to 5 median years; while in 5% to 13% of the instances, IPV persisted for >20 years. IPV rates were higher for younger women, women with lower income and less education, single mothers, and those who had been abused as a child.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The high prevalence of IPV across women's lifetimes in the previous 5 years and the previous year are documented. The present investigation provides new information of IPV chronicity, severity, and the overlap of IPV types over a woman's adult life span.
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Studies, Department of Preventive Care, Group Health Cooperative, Seattle, Washington 98101, USA. thompson.rs@ghc.org
authors.forename: Robert S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Thompson
authors.forename: Amy E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Bonomi
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Reid
authors.forename: Jane A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Dimer
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Carrell
authors.forename: Frederick P
authors.initials: FP
authors.lastname: Rivara
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002654:Child Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods; D017579:Domestic Violence / Q000145:classification / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008875:Middle Aged; D015995:Prevalence; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology