Prevalence of violence against women in the Brussels Capital Region

OBJECTIVES

Overall objective:

To conduct a policy-oriented study on prevalence and characteristics of violence against women in Brussels Capital Region.

Specific objectives:

Assess the prevalence of violence against women during life-course, disaggregated by perpetrator/ victim; different forms of violence (including physical, sexual, psychological, stalking and sexual intimidation);

Assess the correlation between various risk factors including age, income, education, ethnicity/ origin, place of residence (neighbourhood in Brussels), substance abuse, …;
Assess the physical/psychosocial/mental health consequences, as well as consequences on quality of life;
Assess the willingness to report to police and judiciary;
Assess need for, knowledge of and experience with support services;
Propose recommendations for policy makers.

METHODS
Randomised population-based study (‘household survey’) Sample size based on clustered random (probability) sampling design stratified according to community of Brussels, we will need 500 participants to obtain a representative sample of the Brussels female population between  18  and  74  year.  We  are interviewing in French, Dutch, English, Spanish and standard Arabic to cover 80% of the Brussels population.

STUDY INTRUMENT
Study instrument: we developed a comprehensive questionnaire based on the FRA survey on violence against women (2014) and other validated instruments developed by ICRH (Van Parys et al., 2014; Roelens et al., 2008; Keygnaert et al., 2012/2014). The questionnaire is programmed into Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing software QDS ®.