Talk:Domestic violence statistics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] NPOV assertion

This article is titled, and it's first sentence implies, that it covers the general breadth of statistics about domestic violence. However, the thread of "argument" about the relative frequency of male vs. female survivors as well as perpetrators seems to overwhelm the very few other pieces of data presented. A particular example of this undue weight, although far from the only one, is the placement of that controversy in the first paragraph of the article.

Quite a bit of research has been done on domestic violence, looking at the issues involved from perspectives not only of sex but also of economic class, religion and probably race. The problem of the frequency of domestic violence in a study being highly linked to what definition of DV people use is also quite interesting, and deserves explanation as well. How long do battered partners typically stay in such relationships? Etc.

I understand that there is a lot of emotion and controversy about how to frame domestic violence verses gender, and I do not mean to suggest that that should be ignored. But it feels to me that the controversy has reached a point where authors are inserting the same arguments and data into several places in both this and the parent article Domestic violence, and that that undue weight is detremental to the other important things both articles need to say. --Joe Decker 14:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the whole issue of both gender bias and under-reporting issues in domestic violence statistics is worthy of a significant discussion in the article. The source of every statistic citing one gender is more or less likely to be subject to domestic violence should be identified, as the statistical methodology of that source will affect the bias in any statistics. As domestic violence statistics have the potential to be mis-used by advocates of various lobby groups, with political adgendas, it may also be useful to outline how the statistics from various sources have been used to promote political platforms. -- Cameron Dewe 03:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC)