Fatal and Non-Fatal Intimate Partner and Family Violence Against Older Women: An Exploration of Age and Police Response to Inform Research, Policy, and Practice, United States, 2011-2019 (ICPSR 39463)

Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)

Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection

Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes

Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose

The project included five main goals:

1. Describe the rates and characteristics of intimate partner violence (IPV) and family violence (FV) against older women.
2. Explore patterns of reporting to police and police actions in cases of IPV and FV against older women.
3. Examine arrest patterns for this violence and consider how arrests may be affected by victim and incident characteristics as well as law enforcement resources concerning older adults.
4. Ensure findings are disseminated not only to the research community but are accessible to relevant practitioner groups and policymakers.
5. Identify areas for future work that build upon this study's findings.

Study Design View help for Study Design

This study used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). All three data collections identify cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) and family violence (FV) against older women and the details required to study police responses to these crimes. The NCVS and NIBRS identify cases of non-fatal IPV and FV, and the NIBRS and NVDRS identify cases of fatal IPV and FV. All three data sources benefit from relying on nationally representative samples (NCVS), national coverage (NVDRS), or multi-state coverage (NIBRS). These sources also collect information on non-intimate/family violence and younger victims to allow comparisons. This study took a complementarity approach with each dataset analyzed individually and focused on the strengths of each one.

• NCVS: The NCVS is one of two national measures of crime in the United States. This survey is collected using a stratified, multistage cluster sample of households. Each household member aged 12 and older is interviewed regarding their experience with personal victimization sustained during the previous 6 months. Respondents who indicate they were victimized are asked follow-up questions about each incident including police reporting and actions. The NCVS was selected for the present study as it asks crime victims a series of detailed questions about reporting to police, the reasons for reporting (or not), police actions at the scene and subsequent to the incident, and if an arrest was made. This study pooled multiple years of NCVS concatenated victim data to have enough cases for the initial analyses. Specifically, data from 2011 to 2019 were used, with 2011 being the year that the first members of the baby boomer generation turned 65 and 2019 being the year before the global pandemic (which avoids the uncertain impact of the stay-at-home public health orders on these data collections).
• NIBRS: The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the other national measure of crime in the United States that is based on official reports of crimes that come to the attention of the police, and NIBRS is the current format for collecting UCR data that captures incident-level details. The NIBRS data were selected for the present study as they collect arrest and related clearance information for each incident directly from police records. This study used 2019 for the non-fatal IPV and FV analyses, which was selected to avoid issues with the uncertain impact of the pandemic on this data collection. For fatal IPV and FV, this study pooled three years of data (2017-2019) to provide additional cases for analyses and to parallel the data years pooled for the NVDRS analyses.
• NVDRS: The NVDRS is the CDC's incident-based surveillance system of homicides and other violent deaths. Quantitative variables are gathered by trained data abstractors from multiple sources including death certificates, coroner/medical examiner records, and law enforcement reports. The NVDRS was selected for this study as it takes a public health perspective and includes details not captured by the crime-centered NCVS and NIBRS, and because the restricted-use NVDRS data provide abstractor narratives. This study pooled three years of data (2017-19) to ensure enough cases to analyze the fatal IPV and FV incidents.

Case Selection. Similar case definitions were used for all datasets to identify the older women age categories as well as IPV and FV. For overall age, this study used three groupings (50 and older, 60 and older, and 65 and older), as well as subgroups by decade and Census groups. Non-fatal IPV and FV crimes included attempted and completed physical assaultive violence (aggravated assault and simple assault) and sexual violence (rape/sexual assault). Fatal IPV and FV included non-negligent murders. Spouses, ex-spouses, current and former boy/girlfriends, and common-law spouses were included for IPV. This study was limited to opposite-sex couples as the small number of same-sex couples across the data prevented analyzing these cases separately. All non-intimate family members were included for FV. Only cases involving one victim and one offender were included.

Time Method View help for Time Method

Universe View help for Universe

Reported intimate partner violence and family violence crime incidents in the United States from 2011 to 2019.

Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation

Data Source View help for Data Source

Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)

Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables

• Derived Variables From the National Crime Victimization Survey (DS1): This dataset includes variables derived from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) 1992-2020 Concatenated Files (ICPSR 38136), specifically the DS3 Concatenated Incident File.
• Derived Non-Fatal Variables From the National Incident-Based Reporting System (DS2): This dataset includes variables derived from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) 2019 Extract Files (ICPSR 38565), specifically the DS3 Incident-Level File.
• Derived Fatal Variables From the National Incident-Based Reporting System (DS3): This dataset includes variables derived from three years of the NIBRS Extract Files: 2017 (ICPSR 37650), 2018 (ICPSR 37649), and 2019 (ICPSR 38565). The DS3 Incident-Level File from each of these NIBRS sources were specifically used.

The Principal Investigator provided case selection and variable creation SPSS syntax documentation for each dataset.

Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date

2026-01-28

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