BackgroundIntimate partner violence (IPV) is physical, sexual or psychological violence by a current or former intimate partner. IPV threatens women’s health, and during pregnancy women are more vulnerable to violence. Therefore, IPV screening has been recommended during antenatal care; however, health care providers have expressed concern about the negative impact on women and therefore have been reluctant in conducting IPV screening. Consequently our objective was to investigate pregnant women’s experiences of reading and completing an IPV screening questionnaire.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with postpartum women who had received IPV screening during pregnancy to investigate their experiences using the IVP Violence Against Women Screen (VAWS). Qualitative data were analyzed based on content analysis.ResultsA total of 43 women participated in this study. There were eight (18.6%) women positive for IPV screening during pregnancy. Content analysis for all participants revealed three themes: necessity, acceptability and optimality. ‘Necessity’ referred to benefits for women from IPV screening, and was supported by three categories: ‘redefining the relationship’, ‘promoting IPV awareness’ and ‘opportunity to initiate support’. ‘Acceptability’ of IPV screening was also supported by three categories: ‘comfortable’, ‘quickly completed’ and ‘difficulty’. ‘Optimality’ meant IPV screening during pregnancy was appropriate timing for women who had been screened as either positive or negative.ConclusionsThe majority of women, including women experiencing IPV, had positive responses to IPV screening during pregnancy. Future diffusion of IPV screening requires safe environments for IPV screening and improved awareness of health care providers towards IPV.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12905-018-0566-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Even though the prevalence of IPV during pregnancy had decreased compared with before pregnancy, all women experiencing IPV before pregnancy continued to be victimized during pregnancy. Therefore, IPV screening questions should include IPV that had occurred a year prior.

The Violence Against Women Screen (VAWS) is a Japanese screening tool for intimate partner violence. In order to revise the VAWS to be more accurate and applicable for clinical settings, we conducted an interview with postpartum women screened for IPV during pregnancy to clarify women's response and its situation for VAWS items. MethodsFive new items inquiring about psychological violence were added to the seven items in the original VAWS. A total of 43 postpartum women who answered the 12-item VAWS during pregnancy were asked their response and its situation of the VAWS question items by semi-structured interview. The data was analyzed using content analysis. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of St. Luke's College of Nursing (Approval No. 11-039). ResultsParticipants expressed a variety of perceptions concerning question items on psychological violence. For the question "Is it difficult to settle arguments by talking?", replies consisted of 2 categories: [Get into a quarrel] and [Lack of conversation]. The concept of "talking" included both one-way and two-way conversation depending on context. The psychological violence questions "Has he yelled at you?", "Do you feel safe?", "Do you feel controlled by your partner?" and "Does he have no respect for your feelings?" consisted of more than three categories of answers, including perceptions that researchers did not intend. In addition, some of the psychological violence questions had response categories [Chose wrong options] and [Felt hesitant about which option to choose]. On the other hand, for two psychological violence questions: "Have you felt afraid?" and "Has your partner thrown or punched things?", and for the physical violence and sexual violence questions, participants' perceptions were most consistent. ConclusionVarious perceptions were expressed by participants concerning psychological violence questions. In accordance with our quantitative data analysis, the VAWS requires further revision to make it an accurate and applicable tool to screen IPV.

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