Perceptions of women towards screening for intimate partner violence

BACKGROUND: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an under-diagnosed public health problem affecting women with attendant negative bio-psycho-social ramifications, and unfortunately there is no universally agreed recommendation for routine hospital IPV screening currently. AIM: This study was carried out to determine the prevalence of IPV among women and their perceptions towards screening. SETTING: The study was carried out in a hospital in Southwest, Nigeria. METHODS: The study was a descriptive, cross-sectional study of 347 consenting women. Respondents were recruited using systematic random sampling. Data were collected using questionnaire adapted from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Multi-Country Study Questionnaire on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence against women. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used and a p-value < 5% was considered significant. RESULTS: The prevalence of IPV among the sample was 71.2%. The most common IPV pattern was controlling behaviour (49.6%) while sexual violence (19.6%) was the least. The majority (85.0%) of the respondents agreed that routine IPV screening should be done for women while 96.5% believed that it would enable doctors to help identify victims. The belief that it will help physicians in making a correct diagnosis, shared by 10.7% of the respondents, was statistically significant (odd ratio [OR] = 2.592, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.180–5.694, p-value = 0.018). A total of 37 respondents (10.7%) were about three times more likely to have experienced IPV than others. CONCLUSION: There was a high prevalence of IPV and the women are open to routine hospital IPV screening, with the belief that it will help physicians to make an accurate diagnosis of IPV. CONTRIBUTION: This research was done by majority of family health specialists, in Nigeria, an African country. The focus of the research was distinctly with an African perspective, in the field of family medicine which has a public health implication and effect on the community.