Understanding statistics in the family violence field

Two recently released Australian papers seek to increase understanding of statistics in the family violence field.

An Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse Research and Practice Brief, Reading Statistics: A Guide for Professionals Working with Domestic and Family Violence discusses why statistical literacy is crucial for those working in the family violence field. The brief sets out how an understanding of statistics can improve critical analysis of data, provide information to guide policy and programme development and evaluation, and increase awareness of political and social influences on data. The paper explains statistical measures and terms, in particular, samples, variables, measures of central tendency, significance and regression analysis.

An Australian White Ribbon Research Series paper Understanding the Statistics about Male Violence Against Women, authored by Professor Donna Chung, examines the variable nature of male violence against women statistics. The paper divides statistics into two main categories: Agency Statistics (generated from government and non-government agencies) and Population Statistics (generated from research on the general population). The paper also discusses how the sensitive nature of domestic violence impacts on statistics.