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A synthesis of recent VISION activities: Sharing the research and practice of adolescent domestic abuse identification and prevention

Adolescent domestic abuse (ADA) goes by many names, sometimes referred to as toxic teenage relationships. ADA includes physical, emotional, and/ or sexual abuse that occurs between young people who are, or were, dating. It is often overlooked in research, policy and practice. As a phenomenon, abusive behaviour between adolescents in intimate relationships remains relatively invisible, due in part to the persistent yet unfounded assumption that domestic abuse is something that only occurs between adults.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales finds that women aged 16 to 19 are more likely to experience domestic abuse than older age groups (ONS, 2020), but despite the prevalence, women in this age group are less likely to be referred to support services (SafeLives, 2017).

SafeLives discovered, on average, experiencing abusive behaviour from a partner begins at age 14 or 15, (2017). Further research in Wales found that among those aged 11-16 years old experienced a range of mental health and social impacts associated with experiencing domestic abuse, including teenage pregnancy, self-harm, and violent behaviour (Young et al, 2021).

With this landscape in mind and led by the need from our partners and to ensure intersectoral collaboration, VISION set up a working group with Thames Valley Police, SafeLives, Islington Borough Council, H.O.P.E Training, Respect, Youth Realities and others to investigate ADA via three activities:

ADA rapid systematic review to synthesise existing research and data on ADA in teenage relationships (January 2024; funded by the City St George’s, UoL, Policy Support Fund).
ADA workshop: ‘Too Soon, Too Late’ organised by VISION with SafeLives Changemakers and young people who experienced abuse in their relationships when they were aged 13 to 16 (March 2024; funded by the City St George’s, UoL, Participatory Research Fund).
ADA conference, an event to bring together practitioners, people with lived experience, police, researchers, and policymakers working in the ADA environment (April 2024; funded by the City St George’s, UoL, HEIF KE Fund).

The report, Summary of the VISION Adolescent Domestic Abuse activities and events in 2024, is available online. It summarises the findings and recommendations of the review, workshop and conference for a roundtable of police, local government, academics, practitioners and specialist services working in the field held in June 2024. It was produced for the working group as an aid to distil the thinking thus far across the three VISION activities.

ADA Rapid Systematic Review

The VISION review investigates ADA by examining the terminology and related terminology used in the literature. The paper focuses on the perpetration and victimisation as it concerns adolescents, especially those under 16 years old, and the factors that act as protective and recovery mechanisms for young people experiencing ADA.

VISION researchers, led by Dr Ruth Weir, conducted a systematic rapid review of 79 papers from databases for peer-reviewed literature.

The team discovered definitional issues, an overemphasis on quantitative studies, and a lack of attention to ADA when it intersects with cultural factors, gender differences, criminalisation, and poor mental health. Many of the studies report on school-based settings, with limited reporting and understanding of the role of neighbourhood factors in acting as protective and recovery mechanisms. Additionally, literature on impacted adolescents and their help-seeking behaviours is sparse. The review revealed that evidence on abuse affecting adolescents in the UK remains patchy.

Highlights from the VISION ADA rapid review: Gaps, limitations & considerations for future research

ADA workshop: Too Soon, Too Late

Dr Polina Obolenskaya and Dr Annie Bunce, VISION Research Fellows, collaborated on a consultation project, “Too soon, too late”, with the SafeLives Changemakers and with young people who experienced abuse in their relationships when they were aged 13 to 16. The main aim of the consultation was to develop a robust, methodological framework for a future adolescent domestic abuse (ADA) research proposal.

Together with SafeLives, a charity working to end domestic violence, they co-developed the material for the online workshop, a focus group, with young people, which took place in March 2024, and was facilitated by the ‘Changemakers’, a group of young people passionate about amplifying the voices of survivors of domestic abuse. They work alongside SafeLives providing a young person’s expertise on the charity’s work, conducting research, and working to influence policy change.

Some of the preliminary themes from the workshop include:

Lack of recognition amongst young people of both domestic abuse (DA) in general, and ADA specifically.
Young people don’t easily identify their own experiences of ADA as DA.
Young people’s understanding of ADA changes over time.
Young people highlighted the wide variation in experiences of ADA and professional responses to it.
Young people can identify clear priorities for future ADA research.
Young people see school as a key point of early intervention, but feel that improvement is needed in terms of better education around healthy relationships and school cultures that encourage open discussion around DA whilst actively challenging attitudes and behaviours conducive to ADA and sexual violence.

Further information can be found in the report available for downloading online.

ADA Conference

The Adolescent Domestic Abuse conference held on 18 April brought together 161 academics, practitioners, and policy makers to share existing research, policy and practice. Dr Ruth Weir, Senior Research Fellow at the Violence & Society Centre and the VISION research project at City, and Katy Barrow Grint, Assistant Chief Constable at Thames Valley Police, welcomed the delegates.

Louise Rolfe, OBE, Metropolitan Police and National Police Chief Council lead for Domestic Abuse was a keynote speaker. Louise spoke about the national context of domestic abuse, highlighting the most harmful abuse that is seen is coercive control and that domestic abuse accounts for more than 30% of violent crime. She also spoke about the role of the media requiring scrutiny and the need for sustainable long-term systemic solutions.

Professor Christine Barter, Co-Director of the Connect Centre for International Research on Interpersonal Violence and Harm, University of Central Lancashire, also gave a keynote. She provided an overview of her 15 years of research exploring the prevalence, subjective impact and risk factors associated with abuse in young people’s relationships in her presentation, Researching abuse within teenage relationships: A critique of a decade’s work and what we could do better. Her mixed-method body of work addressed both victimisation and perpetration for young people aged 13 to 17.

There were panels on Teenage relationships and abuse: What the research says; Sexual violence in teenage relationships; and Specialist services and local government. Presenters included academics sharing their ADA research from Loughborough University and Durham University and specialist domestic violence organisations like SafeLives, Refuge, and Women’s Aid. Islington Borough Council, representing local government, discussed their work on a multi-agency model project to identify, intervene and protect teenagers experience ADA.

For the full synthesis please see: Summary of the VISION Adolescent Domestic Abuse activities and events in 2024

References

ONS (2020), Domestic abuse in England and Wales overview: November 2020, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/domesticabuseinenglandandwalesoverview/november2020.

Safelives, 2017. Spotlight #3: Young people and domestic abuse, https://safelives.org.uk/knowledge-hub/spotlights/spotlight-3-young-people-and-domestic-abuse.

Young, H., Long, S.J., Melendez-Torres, G.J., Kim, H.S., Hewitt, G., Murphy, S., Moore, G.F., 2021. Dating and relationship violence victimization and perpetration among 11–16-year-olds in Wales: a cross-sectional analysis of the School Health Research Network (SHRN) survey. Journal of Public Health 43, 111–122.

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Workplace bullying and harassment harms health

Workplace bullying and harassment (WBH) is bad for people’s health, and this negative health impact can manifest in a variety of ways and be long-lasting.

Over a decade ago the UK government initiated the Fair Treatment at Work survey, aiming to ‘place the issue of bullying at work on employers’ agendas’, yet there has been no major initiative since.

Using data from the 2014 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, VISION researchers Annie Bunce, Ladan Hashemi and Sally McManus, along with Carrie Myers and Charlotte Clark from City St George’s, University of London and Stephen Stansfeld from Queen Mary, University of London, examined the prevalence and nature of WBH among workers in England, and associations with mental health.

A clear picture of the severity of the problem of WBH in England is painted by four key findings.

One in ten people in paid work reported having experienced WBH in the past year. This is likely to be an underestimate due to underreporting for various reasons;
Those who reported bullying were more likely to be in a financially disadvantaged position;
Over half of people who reported having been bullied at work identified the perpetrator as a line manager; and
Clinically diagnosed common mental disorder was more than twice as likely in employees with experience of WBH compared with those without, and those exposed to WBH were also twice as likely as others in paid work to screen positive for PTSD.

Taken together these findings demonstrate that WBH is common in UK workplaces, it may be driven and exacerbated by issues of inequality, power and hierarchical organisational structures, and it is associated with depressive and anxiety disorders severe enough to warrant health service intervention and treatment.

This power dynamic should not be forgotten when addressing issues in the workplace, but the complexity of workplace environments creates challenges for identifying, understanding and addressing bullying. Reports of WBH can coincide with performance concerns from managers, and, whilst behaviours intended as legitimate performance management activities might be misinterpreted as bullying by the employee, it is also possible that HR practitioners attribute managerial bullying behaviours to legitimate performance management practice to exonerate mangers and protect the organisation.

This links to a recently published piece for The Conversation by Sally McManus and Kat Ford (Bangor University), which sets out how companies can influence and perpetuate violence in society, including via employment practices that conceal the extent of bullying, sexual harassment and other forms of workplace violence (for further information see Six ways companies fuel violence (theconversation.com).

Also, structural issues in the workplace can create pressure for managers which they then take out on those they manage, managers can be victims of WBH themselves, and organisational culture may perpetuate WBH.

Given such complex power dynamics, it is recommended that organisations involve employees at all levels in the development of policies, and collaboratively review the implementation and performance of policies regularly to ensure they are working for the people they are intended to protect. Rather than prescribed ‘tick box’ policies and responses, creative methods incorporating employees’ perspectives may more likely lead to meaningful change.

Crucially, managers and HRs might not be the most approachable people for victims of WBH. For example, other VISION research has found this to be the case for victims of intimate partner violence and abuse (see VISION Policy Series: The impact of intimate partner violence on job loss and time off work in the UK – City Vision). Therefore, alternative sources of support need to be available within organisations, such as unions and counselling services.

For further information please see the full paper available at: Prevalence and nature of workplace bullying and harassment and associations with mental health conditions in England: a cross-sectional probability sample survey | BMC Public Health (springer.com)

Or please contact Dr Annie Bunce at annie.bunce@city.ac.uk

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Companies and commercial processes shape violence

VISION seeks to highlight the wider contexts in which violence occurs. To tackle the causes of violence and improve violence reduction strategies, governments tend to look to families, communities, schools, health and justice services, and community and voluntary sector organisations for solutions. While these are crucial, a broader and more radical approach is also needed.

For decades, health researchers have raised awareness of various ‘commercial determinants of health’. Initially, this work focused on industries producing harmful products like tobacco, alcohol, fast food and fossil fuels. However, the approach has expanded to show how a much wider range of companies and industries harm our health through their various practices.

We applied an existing framework to unpack the specific ways in which companies and commercial processes might shape not only our health – but also the nature and extent of violence in societies. The analysis was carried out by Kat Ford from the Public Health Collaborating Unit at Bangor University, Karen Hughes from Policy and International Health, World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Investment for Health and Wellbeing, Public Health Wales, and VISION researchers Mark Bellis, Olumide Adisa and Sally McManus.

A summary of six of the ways in which companies can fuel violence has been published in The Conversation. They include political practices like lobbying against safety legislation, and financial practices like investing in regimes with poor human rights records. The full paper details these and other commercial processes and argues that governments need to consider the role and influence of companies if violence prevention is to be effective.

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Un-Siloing Securitization: An intersectional intervention

By Dr Alexandria (Andri) Innes, VISION researcher and Senior Lecturer in International Politics at City, UoL

This research makes a case for shifting how we use and think about securitization theory. Securitization theory conventionally offers some insight into how certain issues are brought under the umbrella of security – normally state security – rather than sitting in normal political debate. When something is securitized more extreme or authoritarian policies that would normally be controversial in liberal democracies can be used. This might include things like removing civil liberties such as freedom of speech or freedom of assembly, or indefinite detention, or even policies that we’re all familiar with from 2020 and 2021, prohibiting freedom of association and freedom of movement in public space.

Securitization theory has focused on process (how something becomes securitized), object (what is securitized), and subject (who is being protected). The latter is generally the state and/or society. The process works through a meaningful speech act suggesting something is a security issue or framing it in security language (think about the war on drugs or the war on terror). The speech act then has to be accepted by an audience, who might be society at large, or the public, but also might be specialist practitioners, policy makers, think tanks, civil society, educators and so on. And the object of securitization is anything where this type of totalising discourse is evident. Examples include health, transnational crime, climate change, religion, humanitarianism, terrorism, particular ethnic identities, and immigration along with plenty of other things.

In this article, I argue that we should consider inequality when deconstructing and attempting to understand the process and practice of securitization. I suggest that racialization, ethnicization, and gendering create structural inequality in the ordering of what we think of as international – a world composed of equal state units. The nation state relies on these processes to function as an identity unit in the way that it does (with passport carrying, rights-bearing citizens and the right to deny rights to people who are not in the correct in-group). I propose that securitization theory might do better at dealing with inequality of we focus on the experience of being securitized, more so than the speech acts that make that securitization happen.

The article functioned more as a review of this sub-paradigm, and turns attention to the way the ‘object’ part tends to be siloed into the relevant thematic areas. So we look to just one securitized object at a time. Here, the article looks instead at three processes of securitization, to show that the siloing means the forms of inequality inherent in the nation state and national security are reproduced rather than reckoned with.

I look at the securitization of health, the securitization of immigration, and the securitization of gender-based violence. I suggest by mapping these objects of securitization together, we can better see the intersectional violence of inequality played out, and make visible the vulnerability, inequality and violence that pre-exists securitization, but is also enhanced, aggravated and at times hidden by it.

For further information please see: Un-siloing securitization: an intersectional intervention | International Politics (springer.com)

Or contact Andri at alexandria.innes @city.ac.uk

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Cyberbullying and social media user-verification

Social media platforms enable people to communicate in both positive and negative ways, including in ways that may be abusive and bullying. Abusive messaging can harm mental health, and has been shown to increase during periods of public crisis, such the Covid pandemic. There is a need to better identify and classify cyberbullying and online abuse, to improve the design of deterrence strategies.

In a recently published study VISION researcher Dr Lifang Li explored how the ‘verification status’ of social media user accounts was associated with cyberbullying. Verification refers to when a social media user’s identity has been confirmed, for example by the checking of an identity card. Lifang examined data from China’s main social media platform, Weibo, to classify messages that had been posted during the pandemic about people who were diagnosed with the coronavirus. She examined the content of posts made by users who were verified and unverified, used techniques to understand how often anger-related words were used, and measured the extent to which the posts got shared.

Posts that could be classified as critical of people diagnosed with Covid during the pandemic (for example, describing them as ‘reckless’ or ‘selfish’ for having contracted the infection) were in the minority, most social media users were understanding or neutral in their online communications. Lifang found that posts that were critical of people diagnosed with Covid were more likely to use anger-related words. Although not a focus of the paper, official verification of a social media user’s identity did not appear to be strongly related to how likely they were to post or repost critical views.

However, male verified social media users were more likely than unverified or female users to have their posts shared. This suggests that their online activity may have a disproportionate impact on other users. Cyberbullying monitoring may need to consider such differences, especially in the context of public health crises.

This study made novel use of machine learning techniques, which may help other researchers developing algorithms to identify abusive posts online.

For further information, please read the publication at Frontiers | Social media users’ attitudes toward cyberbullying during the COVID-19 pandemic: associations with gender and verification status (frontiersin.org) or contact VISION researcher and study co-author Angus Roberts at angus.roberts@kcl.ac.uk.

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Measuring ethnicity and the implications for violence inequalities

The question of how we measure, categorise, and represent ethnicity poses a growing challenge for identifying and addressing ethnic inequalities. Conceptual critiques and qualitative studies highlight the complexities and challenges of measuring ethnicity, yet there remains a lack of quantitative studies investigating the implications of these complexities for inequalities research.

VISION researchers, Hannah Manzur, Niels Blom, and Estela Capelas Barbosa, address this gap by scrutinizing methodological processes and analysing the implications of measurement and categorisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), critiquing the UK’s standardised measurement of ethnicity in national survey data and government statistics.

Based on their comparative quantitative analysis of standardised ethnicity categories and regional origins and their evaluation of the CSEW and census’ methodologies, they propose an alternative categorisation of ethnicity, focusing on the ‘Mixed’, ‘Asian’, and ‘Latinx/Hispanic’ ethnic groups.

Using adjusted crosstabulations and logistic regression models, they found variations in ethnic patterns of violence victimisation based on standardised measures and their alternative recategorisation, particularly relating to the distinction between ‘Asian’ sub-groups, the recategorisation of ‘Mixed’ ethnicities, and the inclusion of ‘Latinx/Hispanic’ as a distinctive ethnic group.

Their findings reveal valuable insights into the implications of ethnic categorisation for understanding violence inequalities, with significant implications for further policy and research areas.

For further information please see: Social Sciences | Free Full-Text | (Mis)Representing Ethnicity in UK Government Statistics and Its Implications for Violence Inequalities (mdpi.com)

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Trends in outcomes used to measure the effectiveness of domestic and sexual violence and abuse services: a scoping review

In the UK, domestic and sexual violence and abuse (DSVA) is prevalent, and a range of support services and interventions are available to those who have experienced or perpetrated it. Currently, there is no consensus on how the effectiveness and impact of these services should be measured, nor is it clear what outcomes and outcome measures are currently being used by service providers and researchers.

In 2022, VISION researchers, led by Dr Sophie Carlisle, co-designed and conducted a scoping review with an advisory group of representatives from six UK-based DSVA organisations, to summarise, map and identify trends in outcome measures used in evaluations and studies of DSVA services and interventions in the UK.

They searched eight databases, four grey literature databases, put out a call for evidence and searched relevant DSVA websites and identified a total of 80 studies describing 87 interventions and services that were relevant to the review.

A total of 426 outcome measures were extracted, of these there were 282 unique outcome measures. The most commonly used outcome, reported in 11 studies, was the cessation of abuse, as measured by the Severity of Abuse Grid. Over time, both the number of studies and the variety of outcome measures has increased.

This research highlights inconsistencies in measurements of effectiveness in evaluations of DSVA services and research. As this area matures, there is an increased need for a core of common, reliable metrics.

For further information please see: Trends in outcomes used to measure the effectiveness of UK-based support interventions and services targeted at adults with experience of domestic and sexual violence and abuse: a scoping review | BMJ Open

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Unleashing social media potential to research violence against women and girls in Iran

Researching violence against women and girls (VAWG) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) presents unique challenges, primarily due to various contextual factors that hinder conventional survey methodologies. These challenges include limited funding, political obstacles, and safety concerns for both researchers and participants. Consequently, traditional survey approaches may prove unfeasible or inadequate in capturing the complex realities of VAWG in these settings.

VAWG is a particularly pressing issue in Iran, a Middle Eastern country marked by its patriarchal structure and systematic and pervasive gender discrimination. The patriarchal and legal structure of the country perpetuates gender inequalities and reinforces societal norms that tolerate or even condone violence against women. Yet, understanding the full scope of VAWG in Iran remains hindered by a lack of robust data.

In a recently published study, VISION researchers, Ladan Hashemi and Sally McManus, collaborated with counterparts from Bristol University (Nadia Aghtaie) and Iran (Fateme Babakhani) to explore the effectiveness of social media in recruiting victims of violence in Iran, shedding light on their experiences and the potential of social media as a research tool.

The findings revealed valuable insights into the manifestation and context of VAWG in Iran. Social media recruitment proved to be effective in reaching a diverse sample of victims and provided crucial insights into the dynamics of violence, the identities of perpetrators, and the settings where violence occurs. Victims often reported experiences from more than one type of perpetrator, spanning both public and domestic spheres. While social media recruitment offers broad reach and a safer environment for data collection, it also presents challenges such as sampling biases which affect the generalisability of findings.

For further information please see: Social Sciences | Free Full-Text | Using Social Media to Recruit Seldom-Heard Groups: Reaching Women and Girls with Experience of Violence in Iran (mdpi.com)

Or contact Ladan at ladan.hashemi@city.ac.uk

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Referral outcomes for victim-survivors of sexual violence accessing specialist services

Sexual violence and abuse (SVA) is highly prevalent globally, has devastating and wide-ranging effects on victim-survivors, and demands the provision of accessible specialist support services.

In the UK, Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW), a voluntary third sector organization, is the main provider of specialist SVA services. Understanding the profile of victim-survivors who are referred to RCEW and their referral outcomes is important for the effective allocation of services.

Using administrative data collected by three Rape Crisis Centres in England between April 2016 and March 2020, VISION researchers Annie Bunce, Niels Blom and Estela Capelas Barbosa, used multinomial regression analysis to examine the determinants of victim-survivors’ referral outcomes, controlling for a wide range of potentially confounding variables.

They discovered that support needs, more so than the type of abuse experienced, predicted whether victim-survivors were engaged with services. Particularly, the presence of mental health, substance misuse and social, emotional, and behavioral needs were important for referral outcomes. The referral source also influenced referral outcomes, and there were some differences according to demo-graphic characteristics and socioeconomic factors.

This research was co-produced with stakeholders from RCEW, who informed interpretation of these findings.

For further information please see: Determinants of Referral Outcomes for Victim–Survivors Accessing Specialist Sexual Violence and Abuse Support Services (tandfonline.com)

Or contact Annie at annie.bunce@city.ac.uk

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Bystander experiences of domestic violence and abuse during COVID

VISION researchers Alex Walker, Bryony Perry, Emma R Barton, Lara Snowdon and Mark Bellis surveyed people in Wales about their experiences of being a bystander to domestic violence and abuse (DVA) during the COVID-19 pandemic, with their colleagues at University of Exeter, Public Health Wales, and University of Durham.

This research provides a unique perspective on DVA during a global pandemic, and therefore offers important new evidence that can contribute to DVA prevention during public health emergencies.

Globally, professionals voiced concern over the COVID-19 restrictions exacerbating conditions for DVA to occur. Yet evidence suggests this also increased opportunities for bystanders to become aware of DVA and take action against it. This mixed methods study consists of a quantitative online survey and follow-up interviews with survey respondents. Conducted in Wales, UK, during a national lockdown in 2021, this article reports on the experiences of 186 bystanders to DVA during the pandemic.

The researchers found that while public health restrictions exacerbated DVA, they also increased the opportunity for bystanders to become aware of DVA, and to take prosocial action. Results support the bystander situational model whereby respondents have to become aware of the behaviour, recognise it as a problem, feel that they possess the correct skills, and have confidence in their skills, before they will take action.

Having received bystander training was a significant predictor variable in bystanders taking action against DVA; this is an important finding that should be utilised to upskill general members of the community.

For further information please see: Bystander experiences of domestic violence and abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic in: Journal of Gender-Based Violence – Ahead of print (bristoluniversitypressdigital.com)

Or contact Lara at lara.snowdon@wales.nhs.uk

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