Understanding family violence data

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Understanding family violence data

• Workshop facilitator Pauline Gulliver

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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

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Data collection
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A big problem

• No single agency collects/collates family
  violence data for New Zealand

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Government agency data sources

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

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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

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BUT

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

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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)

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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

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Other problems

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

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Population based data

• Examples
• New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey
• New Zealand Violence Against Women Survey
• Youth 2000 (2007 2012) Surveys

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• 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.

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Data collection
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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?

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• 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

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Terminology

• Be sure you understand WHAT is being reported
• If you dont understand, go to the SOURCE (or the
  NZFVC) and ASK.

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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)

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Proportions

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

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Source Definition 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Family Violence Death Review Committee (2009) Family violence deaths out of culpable deaths 25 out of 53 (47) 26 out of 63 (41) 19 out of 65 (29) 41 out of 88 (47) 26a out of 72 (36)
New Zealand Police Statistics Recorded family violence murders out of total murders 26 out of 49 (53) 21 out of 49 (44) 16 out of 52 (31) 36 out of 65 (55) 25 out of 46 (54)
Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families, Family Violence Indicators Report (2011) Recorded family violence homicide offences (out of total family violence and non-family violence homicide offences) 31 out of 64 (48) 28 out of 65 (43) 19 out of 65 (29) 42 out of 91 (46) 32 out of 75 (43)

• Different numerator definitions
• Different denominators

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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.

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