Suchergebnisse

Interest in the topic of violence against women has grown strongly over the last two decades. During the nineties, and following studies on the subject in Canada and the United States, the focus has shifted to violence against women in general, and no longer exclusively on domestic violence against women. Following the preparatory work of two UN institutes (UNICRI in Turin and HEUNI in Helsinki), and once the method had been standardized (identical questionnaire and survey method), national studies on this issue have been planned in approximately 30 countries.
The Swiss survey is based on a telephone interview, between April and August 2003, of 1975 women aged 18 to 70 living in the German-speaking and the French-speaking parts of Switzerland. The sample thus obtained is representative of the female population. The method used was the computer-assisted telephone survey, which had already proved adequate in previous victimization surveys. This choice was also motivated by the great complexity of the questionnaire. The latter should indeed allow to apprehend different categories of violence, relating to different types of relationship between the author and his victim (marriage, cohabitation, former partners, colleagues, strangers) since the age of 16 years (experiences lived in childhood are not taken into account).
There are several objectives for this study:
- to increase the awareness of this problem among the authorities and the public
- to promote prevention
- to provide reliable information for the development of legislation, policies and means of assistance to victims
- to set up an internationally comparable database
- to help the police in their work practices concerning violence against women
- to formulate and test certain hypotheses
On thjs basis, here are the hypotheses and research questions:
- What is the extent of this type of violence in Switzerland, compared to other countries? How to explain these differences?
- How has the situation of domestic violence evolved since the study by Gillioz et al. (1994)?
- How important are various factors, including situational and biographical, in experiences of violence?
- What is the influence of the past and current criminal history of men on their tendency to domestic violence?
- What particular interaction effects are revealed among the variables studied?
- How is the role of the police perceived among the victims?
- Does (institutionalized) aid to victims achieve its objectives?