The proposed research project, """"""""Intimate partner violence in Colombia: Do the effects of relative spousal resources vary by community context?"""""""", is a secondary data analysis regarding intimate partner violence (IPV) of two surveys conducted among a national sample of Colombian women and a subsample of Colombian women displaced by conflict within that country. The primary aims of the proposed study are to 1) explore the relationship of women's resources relative to her partner and her risk of IPV and 2) examine the potential modifying effects of community characteristics on this relationship. Despite high rates of IPV globally, the root causes are not well understood. Much of the research on IPV, until recently, has examined individual-level predictors of IPV. While important, such studies ignore the gender-based roots of IPV against women. Other studies, however, have adopted an explicitly gendered framework by focusing on the disparity in resources between intimate partners as a possible risk factor for IPV. Such differences may include, for example, partner differences in income, schooling attainment, age, and decision-making power. Several of these studies have found a relationship between a woman's relative resources and her risk of experiencing IPV. Beyond this work on relative resources, scholars have argued that the larger community context can either exacerbate or protect against IPV. METHODS: The study population for the secondary data analysis includes 20,087 currently partnered women 15-49 y from the 2005 Colombia Demographic and Health Survey and 294 internally displaced currently-partnered women 15-49 y from the 2004 Colombia Internally Displaced Persons Gender-Based Violence Survey. Respondents were drawn from a nationally representative sample of households in Colombia and a sub-sample of internally displaced women living outside Cartagena, Colombia. In this study, a model building strategy will be employed to test the research questions and their associated hypotheses through the following steps: 1) determine the relationship between a woman's relative resources within a partnership and her risk of IPV and whether this risk varies by whether the woman is displaced or non-displaced;2) determine whether the relationship between relative resources and IPV is modified by community characteristics. SIGNIFICANCE: The findings of this study will contribute to CDC's: 1) Health Protection Goal for Healthy People in a Healthy World, particularly focusing on the sub goal of Global Health Promotion;2) Objectives of preventing injuries and their consequences globally;promoting safe, healthy, and accessible physical environments globally;and improving response to natural and manmade disasters, including complex humanitarian emergencies globally;and 3) Priority Populations including low- income groups, minority groups, and women. Finally, these findings may inform research about intimate partner violence among the large population of Latin American immigrants living in the United States.
The results from the proposed study, """"""""Intimate partner violence in Colombia: Do the effects of relative spousal resources vary by community context?"""""""", will add to a body of research examining couple- and community-level risk factors for intimate partner violence (IPV) in cross-cultural contexts. This study also will contribute new knowledge about the contextual determinants of IPV and will inform policies and interventions to address IPV within specific community contexts, both globally and among Latin American immigrant populations in the United States. It may be possible to intervene at the community level to alter the effect of women's dependency or status inconsistency on her risk of IPV.
