INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE AGAINST MEN. A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF HOW DEFINITION, STUDY CHARACTERISTICS AND QUALITY AFFECTS PREVALENCE

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an important social problem, but historically the scientific research has focused mostly on the female victims. Several reviews exist on female victims, but no on male victims. The prevalence rates presented in the literature are very heterogeneous, which has been explained by variations in methodology, a lack of a clear recognized definition and a missing golden standard. This thesis reviews prevalence rates in studies on IPV with a male victim, and answers the following questions; (1) What are the total prevalence rates in relation to the different study characteristics and do we see any significant differences within these characteristics? (2) How does the definition of intimate partner violence and study characteristics affect the prevalence rate? (3) What type of relationship do we see between the quality of studies and prevalence rate?A systematic review has been carried out resulting in 49 relevant studies on male victims of IPV. The data from these 49 studies have been extracted based on the operationalization of “definition” in categories of type of violence, type of instrument and number of survey questions and in the operationalization of study quality based on a quality index by Looney et al. (2000). A students t-test and linear regression models was conducted to answer the research questions. This study finds that men are more often victims of psychological violence than physical violence, which is in contrast to female victims. The study also finds that the introduction of each of the definition-variables results in higher prevalence rates. This indicates, that factors related to the definition are important elements in the study of IPV prevalence in male victims.