US emergency department data show both that violent assaults are on the rise, and when they most often occur

In their article published in the May online edition of Chronobiology International, authors Khurana et al. analyzed 13 years of US emergency department data and found there were more than 21 million injury visits due to assault in the United States between 2005 and 2017. And the incidence of interpersonal violence (IPV) significantly increased over the study period, a finding contrary to other research indicating that IPV is trending downward. Khurana et al. “believe this speaks to the inaccuracy of self-reported information about IPV” used as the basis of other studies. Instead of basing their analysis on self-reported assault data, they used data collected in the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program (NEISS AIP). A federally regulated national database containing annually collected non-fatal injury data from a representative sample of roughly 100 hospitals with an emergency department (ED), the NEISS AIP contains incidence estimates of all types and external causes of nonfatal injuries and poisonings treated in those EDs. Khurana et al. looked specifically at incidences pertaining to violent assault. In addition to the increasing number of IPV during the 13-year span that they evaluated, Khurana et al. found that assault-related injuries peaked in the mid-summer months for all assault types except those due to robbery, which peaked in early September. They also found that assault-related injuries increased on weekends. The NEISS AIP is a stratified, weighted dataset managed by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and made available to the public by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), in order to provide the basis for national estimates of all types of nonfatal injuries that occur in the US. Hundreds more publications using NEISS AIP data are available in the ICPSR Bibliography, and can be found listed on the NEISS series page.