Linking community protective factors to intimate partner violence perpetration

Abstract

This study explores how community factors moderate men's individual risk for physical and psychological intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration. The sample of 604 male first-semester undergraduate students supports a connection between county-level protective and risk factors, an individual risk factor, and IPV perpetration. For each unit increase in the proportion of women in powerful positions within a county, there was a 71% decrease in the risk that control-seeking respondents would perpetrate physical IPV, controlling for other factors including population density and violent crime. This article presents a multilevel analysis using hierarchical generalized linear modeling and discusses practice and research implications.

Keywords: contextual factors; intimate partner violence; protective factors.