Making it count: A practical guide to collecting and managing domestic violence data

Domestic Violence

Making it count: A practical guide to collecting and managing domestic violence data

Domestic violence accounts for 25% of all violent crime, a higher percentage than any other type of violent crime. Yet the average survivor of domestic violence will suffer 35 or more assaults over a period of 7 years before making an approach to the police or other DV agency. It is an underreported and underrecorded crime, making the capture and management of data essential to ensure that as complete a picture of cases is held, and that offenders are held accountable for their actions. Inadequate collection of data may also lead to the allocation of too few resources to cope with the volume of DV work. This Community Safety Briefing from Nacro gives practical advice about how best to manage DV data and about maximising the use of data that had been collected.

Title: Making it count: A practical guide to collecting and managing domestic violence data
Authors: Tina Hall and Sam Wright
Series: Nacro Community Safety Briefings
Number of pages: 8
Date published: July 2003

The guide begins by examining definitions of domestic violence - including physical and emotional abuse, erosion of self-esteem, threats, destruction of property, theft, isolation, and stalking - and the nature and extent of the problem of domestic violence.

The importance of collecting data on DV is also outlined. The authors discuss the potential uses of data and the problems that a failure to manage data may bring. These include

Uses	Problems
Assessing prevalence, form and severity of domestic violence	Survivors have to disclose information to several agencies
Spotting cross-cutting issues, eg gender, race, disability, nationality, age	Several agencies may have a partial picture of a case without any one agency seeing the whole picture
Baselining to examine the effect of future work	Threat to survivors' safety due to inappropriate response based on incomplete data
Scoping the need for survivor services	Offenders are not held accountable for their actions
Providing evidence for the need for survivor services	Resources are not adequately allocated

The report gives practical advise on how to overcome the problems and maximise the benefits of DV data sharing. The report has specific advice to give on the following topics:

Collecting data
Legislative powers
Co-ordination of data
Types of data required
Separating survivor from perpetrator
Developing effective responses

The report also gives a table of common difficulties and suggested solutions, reproduced below:

Common difficulties	Suggested solutions
Frontline staff not asking about domestic violence when faced by a suspected survivor of abuse.	Provision of domestic violence awareness training that includes methods of posing sensitive questions. Clear agency policies and procedures for dealing with domestic violence issues. Staff awareness of resources available to provide support and advice to survivors. Monitoring the implementation of policies and procedures. Identifying a lead officer within each agency to provide support and information to other members of staff.
Staff not recording or returning data.	Provision of training to increase awareness of rationale for, and methods of, collecting data. Establishing routine systems or questioning and recording information to ensure data has to be recorded as part of job roles. Monitoring the completion and returning of forms for staff. Providing regular feedback on what the aggregate information reveals, and how it is being used to develop services. Identifying a lead officer within each agency to provide support and information to other members of staff.
Agencies failing or refusing to share data	Address any concerns about additional workloads by keeping recording mechanisms close to existing work methods, and by considering minimising data requirements. Identify benefits of, and uses for data. Address any confidentiality issues that may have arisen. Training for staff on the requirements to collect data under the CDA (1998), DPA (1998) and HRA (2000).
Consent and confidentiality issues	Consent from survivors does not have to be obtained with regard to the collection and dissemination of non-personal/identifiable information. Ensure that survivors of abuse are asked to consent to any personal details being recorded and shared with other agencies. Where clients do not consent to having their data recorded, no personal records should be put on the database - although anonymised data may still be collected.
Quality of data recording is poor	Provision of training for staff completing returns. Procedures set up for managers/the central collating agency to quality check forms and feedback findings. Consider simplification of data requested.

Download Making it count: A practical guide to collecting and managing domestic violence data from the Nacro website PDF 107Kb

Last update: Wednesday, August 13, 2008

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Making it count: A practical guide to collecting and managing domestic violence data

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