Screening for Intimate Partner Violence in a Primary Care Setting: The Validity of "Feeling Safe at Home" and Prevalence Results

Abstract

Background: We conducted a study to assess the validity of a screening question commonly used to detect intimate partner violence (IPV) in primary care settings. We also analyzed prevalence and risk factors of IPV.Methods: We used an embedded domestic violence detection instrument in a general health questionnaire at one family medicine clinic. Questionnaire scales included a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS), depression and alcohol use scales, and a personal safety question ("Do you feel safe at home?"). We assessed the sensitivity, specificity, and predictive value of the personal safety question in our sample using responses to the modified CTS and the personal safety question. Three hundred ninety-nine female patients over the age of 18 completed the survey.

Child Exposure to Parental Violence and Psychological Distress Associated With Delayed Milestones

“…[37][38][39][40][41][42] This could be a function of our single-question IPV screening method, which asks only whether a parent has been "kicked, hit, or slapped," and may lack the sensitivity of a more comprehensive tool. This question, however, mirrors a validated surveillance question from the Partner Violence Screen 26 that has been significantly correlated with IPV and successfully used, both alone 43 and as part of a brief screening tool, 44 to help detect IPV in primary care settings. Despite this potential lack of sensitivity, which would again tend to bias our findings toward the null, we demonstrated associations between IPV and the attainment of developmental milestones in this study that may be clinically useful.…”

How far does screening women for domestic (partner) violence in different health-care settings meet the UK National Screening Committee criteria for a screening programme? Systematic reviews of nine UK National Screening Committee criteria

“…The use of a single question was investigated by Peralta and Fleming, 88 who asked women within a family (general) practice setting 'Do you feel safe at home?' and compared this with a modified version of the CTS (six items instead of 19, five of which related to psychological and one to physical violence).…”

Detección temprana de la violencia del compañero íntimo en el sector sanitario. ¿Una intervención basada en la evidencia?

“…Entre los 18 finalmente incluidos para el análisis, se recuperaron 5 revisiones sistemáticas 16-20 y 13 estudios originales [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] . Tres de estos 13 originales ya se habían analizado en las revisiones sistemáticas recuperadas [21][22][23] .…”

“…La heterogeneidad de las variables y los instrumentos de referencia que utilizan dificulta la comparación de sus resultados 17 . A partir de los resultados disponibles sobre la exactitud de las pruebas de detección temprana aplicadas 24,25,27 (tabla 2) se obtuvo una sensibilidad sumaria del 47,2%, una especificidad del 92,6%, un valor predictivo positivo del 44% y negativo del 93,4%. Teniendo en cuenta que la prevalencia de mujeres maltratadas en España es del 11,1% (n = 2.432.279 sobre población de mujeres españolas en 2004 de 21.912.433), se estima que 160.530 mujeres serían erróneamente etiquetadas como maltratadas y 1.362.076 casos reales no serían detectados por la prueba de detección temprana (tabla 3).…”