Trends in Family Violence Are Not Causally Associated with COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders: a Commentary on Piquero et al.

COVID-19 has caused a wave of research publications in academic and pre-print outlets which have resulted in several high-profile retractions. While the breadth of emerging research has been instrumental in understanding and curbing the global pandemic in near real-time, unfortunately manuscripts with major methodological challenges have fallen through the cracks. In this perspective, we illustrate this issue in light of a recent manuscript by Piquero et al. (2020). In the study, a statistically significant association between stay-at-home orders and family violence was not detected; however, the authors widely disseminated a “12.5% increase in family violence” offenses to a variety of media outlets. This negligent dissemination of inaccurate research findings has important implications for policy and the virus mitigation efforts, which might urge policymakers to terminate stay-at-home orders in an effort to reduce family violence and other social risk factors. Changes may ultimately result in more COVID-related deaths as stay-at-home orders are prematurely and inappropriately lifted to prevent purported injuries in the home. Therefore, the widespread propagation of these claims in the absence of scientific evidence of an increase has great potential to cause harm.