Questions on domestic abuse are asked as part of the self-completion section of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). These have largely remained the same since they were introduced in April 2004 but do not align with new legislation on coercive control and domestic abuse. The research was carried out in two stages between 2020 and 2022 for the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) to assess previous questions and develop a new set of questions on domestic abuse including coercive control and statistics.

Methods: Previous questions were assessed via focus groups with victims-survivors, stakeholders and users of the CSEW to see if they were still appropriate and to ascertain gaps. This led to a new set of draft questions (Hester, M., Walker, SJ. & Myhill, A.,2023, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-023-00507-9). A set of 25 questions on relationship status, controlling or coercive behaviour, physical assault, use of weapons, sexual coercion, impact of non-physical and physical abuse were tested further with victims-survivors using online focus groups and interviews. Following further revision the questions were also cognitively tested with victims-survivors and those with no domestic abuse experience) (Hester, M., Walker, SJ., Fahmy, E. & Myhill, A., 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13010010).

Findings: The research has resulted in new questions on intimate partner and family abuse and a new statistical approach, that enables profiles relating to "one-off" or infrequent abuse separately from those suffering ongoing, coercive abuse. The questions are currently being applied by the ONS to a national sample and are working well.

Professor Marianne Hester is a leading researcher of gender-based violence in the UK and internationally and has written about many aspects of violence and abuse including domestic and sexual violence, child contact, domestic abuse in LGBT+ communities and forced marriage. Much of her current work is on perpetrators of domestic abuse, on wider notions of justice for victim-survivors of gender-based violence, and on measuring coercive control. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the international Journal of Gender Based Violence. She was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2012 for services to research and to the community in tackling domestic abuse, elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in 2016 and as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) in 2017. She Trustee of Devon Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Services.

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