COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesLessons from Serbia: men’s characteristics associated withviolenceby Henrica A.F.M. Jansen 1 , Dosiljka Djikanovic 2IntroductionA cross-sectional, population-based household survey was conducted in Belgrade as part of the World HealthOrganization Multi-Country study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence, using an adapted version of theWHO questionnaire. Face to face interviews were conducted with 1,456 women 15-49 years old.Overall 24% reported physical and/or sexual violence by a partner at a certain point prior to the interview.MethodsThe analysis aimed to identify risk factors for intimate partner violence.Lifetime, and not current IPV (past 12 months), was selected as dependent variable because the prevalence ofcurrent IPV in Belgrade was only 4%, and low numbers in the exposed group would reduce the power of theanalysis. Moreover other studies have shown that risk factors correlate in similar ways with current and lifetimeIPV except for age, with young age, in most contexts, being a predictor for increased current violence, butgenerally not for lifetime violence.The analysis focused on selected potential risk factors related to the woman, her partner and their relationship,based on the conceptual model (the ecological framework) and published findings on risk factors. Descriptivecross tabulations were conducted for each of these potential risk factors and the lifetime experience of physicaland/or sexual violence, with the risk factors as the independent variables and lifetime IPV as the dependentvariable.The factors related to women examined were demographic data (age and education); women’s informal socialsupport network (proximity of members of family of birth; frequency of communicating with family of birth, andcounting on their support; women’s experience of childhood sexual abuse before age 15 years; experience of1Senior consultant VAW research, Geneva, Switzerland. Formerly: Epidemiologist to the WHO Multi-country Study at World HealthOrganization (1999-2007)henriette.jansen@gmail.com2Institute of Social Medicine, School of Medicine University of Belgrade227