Assessing Intimate Partner Violence

Individuals were asked about exposure to lifetime traumatic events including physical assault or abuse as an adult from an intimate partner and sexual assault or rape in adulthood, as described above. In addition, individuals also completed the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) domestic violence module which captures four distinct domains of IPV: controlling behavior and emotional, sexual, and physical IPV [37 ]. This tool is a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale and asks respondents if they have experienced 15 separate behaviorally-specific types of IPV [38 (link)]. In our prior work, we noted discrepancies between reports of physical and sexual violence on the DHS domestic violence module and the modified version of the Life Events Checklist for DSM-5 used in the assessment of lifetime PTEs in this analysis [39 ]. Thus, we considered individuals who reported physical IPV with their most recent partner on the DHS domestic violence module, but did not report physical assault or abuse from a partner in adulthood on the PTE assessment to have experienced physical assault or abuse in adulthood from a partner in this analysis. Similarly, we considered individuals who reported sexual IPV with their most recent partner on the DHS domestic violence module but did not report sexual assault or rape as an adult on the PTE assessment to have experienced sexual assault or rape in adulthood.