Technology-Facilitated Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence: An Exploration of Costs and Consequences, United States, 2022 (ICPSR 39183)

Version Date: Feb 11, 2026

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Principal Investigator(s):
Shaun M. Gann, Justice Information Resource Network; Mark A. Cohen, Vanderbilt University

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39183.v1

Version V1

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Summary

Technology-facilitated abuse (TFA) involves tools such as texting, mobile applications, smart devices, telecommunications networks, and social networks to bully, harass, stalk, or intimidate another person. In most cases, the perpetrator is usually someone the victim knows, often in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV). Perpetrators exploit the reach, connectivity, and anonymity of information technology services to commit a wide range of cybercrimes targeting specific individuals that can violate the victim's privacy rights, sense of well-being, and have a lasting, damaging impact on their lives.

In partnership with Dr. Mark Cohen, the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), and Ipsos, the Justice Information Resource Network (JIRN) conducted a study to assess the costs and consequences associated with three types of TFA within the context of IPV: cyberstalking, image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), and doxing. The purpose of this project was to produce greater understanding of the harms that victims and the public more generally suffer related to TFA within IPV, both those with tangible financial costs and harms that are intangible, with attention also paid to the experiences of minors. The goals were:

  1. to document the costs and consequences of three types of TFA (cyberstalking, IBSA, and doxing);
  2. to estimate prevalence of these crimes via a nationally-representative, general population survey;
  3. to provide willingness-to-pay estimates of their costs via discrete choice experiment (DCE); and
  4. to use the results of achieving goals 2 and 3 to estimate the costs of cyberstalking, IBSA, and doxing to the United States.

This study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 consisted of qualitative work to document the consequences to victims of the three forms of TFA in their complexity and interrelatedness. Activities included interviews with service provider professionals, subject matter experts, and survivor-advocates, a literature review, and three advisory board meetings. Phase 2 involved a nationally-representative, general population survey to estimate (a) the prevalence of TFA in the U.S., (b) the proportion of TFA that is associated with IPV, (c) cost values by asking respondents that disclose victimization about their out-of-pocket costs, and (d) DCEs to estimate the costs to society (i.e., the public's willingness-to-pay) associated with cyberstalking, IBSA, and doxing.

This collection only contains the survey data. Qualitative data will be released at a future date.

Citation

Gann, Shaun M., and Cohen, Mark A. Technology-Facilitated Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence: An Exploration of Costs and Consequences, United States, 2022. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2026-02-11. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39183.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (2020-R2-CX-0003)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

State

Restrictions

Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reason for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2022

Date of Collection

2022-11-10 -- 2022-11-21 (Survey), 2021-08 -- 2021-10 (Interviews), 2021-11 -- 2022-02 (Advisory board discussions)
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Study Purpose

The purpose of this study was to understand the tangible and intangible harms that victims of technology-facilitated abuse (TFA)--specifically image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), doxing, and cyberstalking--experience.

Study Design

This study consisted of two subsequent phases. Phase 1 activities were intended to inform definitions of harms and technology-facilitated abuse (TFA) and to review drafts of the national survey administered in Phase 2. To this end, the research team interviewed 17 TFA subject matter experts. Eight self-identified their expertise as cyberstalking, three as image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), one as doxing, one as multiple areas, and one as intimate partner violence (IPV) broadly. Three interviewees were TFA survivors. Eight experts were also on the project advisory board and helped recruit the remaining interviewees via snowball sampling. Interviews were conducted virtually between August and October 2021. The advisory board met three times during the project (November 5, 2021; November 8, 2021; February 1, 2022) to refine definitions of the project scope, TFA, and harms and costs, and to review early drafts of the quantitative survey.

In Phase 2, a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults was administered by Ipsos via their KnowledgePanel platform. Ipsos' recruitment process uses an address-based sampling methodology to cover all households regardless of phone status. The target number of survey responses was 2,500 English and Spanish-speaking respondents. Following pre-testing, the final survey was fielded November 10 to 21, 2022.

Sample

A random sample of 4,167 individuals were drawn from Ipsos' KnowledgePanel. Of those invited, 2,521 (excluding breakoffs) responded and 2,521 qualified for the survey.

Time Method

Cross-sectional

Universe

United States adults

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Description of Variables

A note on terminology: The study team originally used "nonconsensual porn" to describe what is commonly known as "revenge porn", which is now known as nonconsensual distribution of intimate images (NDII). NDII is a subset of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA).

In the individual interviews, participants discussed which technology-facilitated abuse (TFA) they had experience with, how they defined the terms, consequences of victimization and whether they lead to other problems, what they wished people knew about TFA and helping victims, and what types of victim assistance are the most helpful.

In the advisory board discussions, participants gave insight on lists of tangible and intangible consequences and survey questions compiled by the research team, checking for validity, understanding, clarity, and categorization.

The survey incorporated discrete choice experiments (DCE) to measure respondents' willingness to pay to avoid or reduce TFA victimization or its harms. For each form of TFA, items provided respondents with a choice between two hypothetical programs that differed in the percentage the program would reduce TFA (number of adults per 100,000) and what it would cost a household annually. Respondents could also choose to do nothing.

All respondents were asked if they experienced IBSA, doxing, or cyberstalking. Those that did not indicate TFA victimization proceeded to the DCE section of the survey. Respondents that indicated TFA victimization answered questions about their experiences before proceeding to the DCE section.

For each type of TFA, respondents reporting victimization were asked about:

  • When it occurred, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a benchmark (pre-COVID, after COVID, past 12 months)
  • Relationship to perpetrator
  • Physical harms experienced, either directly or indirectly (property, someone close to respondent)
  • Mental harms experienced (e.g., substance abuse, suicidal ideation, social isolation)
  • Educational or employment harms experienced (e.g., dropping out, missing work, loss of employment)
  • Financial and time costs related to harms experienced (e.g., opening new accounts, buying new devices, healthcare, moving, credit monitoring services, legal)
  • IBSA and doxing: How long it took to remove information/images, if applicable; how the information/images/video was shared and with whom
  • IBSA only: What was asked of the respondent to prevent images/video from being shared; what happened after the threat of sharing; how images were initially obtained by the person who shared them; if images were real, fake, or altered

Response Rates

Final stage completion rate: 60.5 percent

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Original Release Date

2026-02-11

Version History

2026-02-11 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

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Weight

Weight information was provided by Ipsos regarding their sampling procedure.

Once all survey data have been collected and processed, design weights are adjusted to account for any differential nonresponse that may have occurred. Depending on the specific target population for a given study, geodemographic distributions for the corresponding population are obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS), or in certain instances from the weighted KnowledgePanel profile data. For this purpose, an iterative proportional fitting (raking) procedure is used to produce the final weights. In the final step, calculated weights are examined to identify and, if necessary, trim outliers at the extreme upper and lower tails of the weight distribution. The resulting weights are then scaled to aggregate to the total sample size of all eligible respondents.

Step 1: Design weights for all KnowledgePanel (KP) assignees were computed to reflect their selection probabilities.

Step 2: The above design weights for KP respondents were raked to the following geodemographic distributions of the 18 and over US population. The needed benchmarks were obtained from the 2022 March Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS), except for language proficiency within Hispanics, the benchmarks were obtained from the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS).

  • Gender (Male and Female) by Age (18-29, 30-44, 45-59, 60+)
  • Race-Ethnicity (White/Non-Hispanic, Black/Non-Hispanic, Other/Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, 2+ Races/Non-Hispanic)
  • Census Region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West) by Metropolitan Status (Metro, Non-Metro)
  • Education (Less than High School, High School, Some College, Bachelor or higher)
  • Household Income (under $25K, $25K-$49,999, $50K-$74,999, $75K-$99,999, $100K-$149,999, $150K and over)
  • Language Dominance (English Dominant Hispanic, Bilingual Hispanic, Spanish Dominant Hispanic, Non-Hispanic)

The resulting weights were scaled to add up to the sample size of respondents and are named as the variable WEIGHT in the survey data file.

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Notes

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  • ICPSR usually offers files in multiple formats for researchers to be able to access data and documentation in formats that work well within their needs. If you have questions about the accessibility of materials distributed by ICPSR or require further assistance, please visit ICPSR’s Accessibility Center.

  • One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.