Measuring real-time violence exposure and its impact on intimate partner violence perpetration among adolescents

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has dire health consequences. To
intervene, it is critical that we first understand why young men
perpetrate IPV. One theory is that men who experience violence are more
likely to perpetrate violence. We used real-time data to examine how daily
and repeated experiences of violence affect IPV behaviors. We enrolled 498
males aged 15-19 years in South Africa. We collected data through weekly
mobile phone surveys (n=12,603) delivered over a year. Generalized linear
mixed effect models were used to fit IPV perpetration as a function of
past-24-hour violence victimization; models included indicators for
between-person and within-person components of victimization. In at least
one survey submitted, 13% of boys reported perpetrating physical IPV, and
5% perpetrating sexual IPV. Any victimization in the past 24 hours
significantly increased the odds of physical (OR 4.00) and sexual violence
perpetration (OR 2.45). When examined individually, sexual violence
victimization had the strongest association (OR of 7.96 for physical and
4.88 for sexual IPV perpetration). We also examined the between-person
influence of victimization. Boys who experienced more violence on average
(a higher person-centered mean exposure) were substantially more likely to
perpetrate both physical IPV and sexual IPV as compared to boys with
overall low levels of victimization. Adolescent boys who experience
violence are more likely to use violence against their partners the same
day. To break this cycle, it will be critical to understand the mechanisms
by which proximal victimization triggers onward violence perpetration.
Both the current findings and the next steps highlight the importance of
real-time, repeated data collection.