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Evidence-informed practice
As Victoria’s dedicated agency for the primary prevention of family violence and violence against women, Respect Victoria is committed to evidence-informed practice. This includes the provision of policy advice informed by data, practice wisdom and lived expertise; developing evidence-informed prevention practice standards, guidance and leading and supporting system coordination to drive uptake across key settings; guiding the monitoring and evaluation of state-wide prevention to better understand what works; and driving research that builds the evidence base needed to effectively drive down rates of violence.
Evidence – whether from data analysis, research, sectoral engagement, or the expertise of survivor advocates – is critical to helping us understand what family, domestic and sexual violence looks like, what drives it, who it impacts and in what ways, and how to effectively prevent it from happening in the first place. Quality and timely evidence also supports early intervention and response services, by guiding program and service design, resourcing, and workforce development.
The primary prevention of violence against women in Victoria, particularly family, domestic and sexual violence, is guided by Our Watch’s Change the Story framework. The framework, based on decades of research evidence, articulates the gender-based drivers of violence against women:
- condoning gender-based violence,
- men’s control of decision making and limits to women’s independence,
- rigid gender stereotypes and dominant forms of masculinity, and
- male peer relations and cultures of masculinity that emphasise aggression, dominance and controls.
Change the Story also articulates reinforcing factors, which can increase the prevalence and severity of violence in the context of the gendered drivers. These are: condoning violence in general, exposure to violence, factors that weaken pro-social behaviour (such as alcohol or climate disasters), and backlash and resistance. A critical part of Change the Story is recognition that the drivers of violence against women are societal and structural: they are pervasive, just like domestic, family and sexual violence, and not contained to any particular cohort or community (Our Watch 2021). Therefore, when we undertake research to understand the presence of drivers, it must consider all parts of our social ecology: the way that gendered drivers are encoded in our social norms, policies, organisations, communities, and relationships. Collecting data on drivers at the individual level is only part of the picture, and will not, on its own, tell the story of what is driving violence at such high rates across Victoria and Australia.
Current practices
Service data collection and use
Data relating to instances, users, and victims of family violence are collected in a number of ways in Victoria, however most people who use or are impacted by violence are not linked into the domestic, family and sexual violence service system (Flood, et al. 2022).The Family Violence Reform Implementation Monitor’s Legislative review of family violence information sharing and risk management provides a comprehensive overview of current practices (FVRIM 2023). Central Information Point (CIP) is an information sharing service that brings risk relevant information about a perpetrator or alleged perpetrator that is held by government systems and databases together into a single report. This information is used by frontline practitioners to support family violence risk assessment and management. The consolidated report provides critical information about a perpetrator’s history and pattern of behaviour. However, as the majority of people who use violence are not reported to the police (Flood, et al. 2022), the data does not give us a comprehensive understanding of everyone who is using violence and how they are using violence. For example, less than 1 in 4 sexual assaults in Australia are reported to police (ABS 2022), and an estimated less than 2 per cent of people who perpetrate sexual assault plead or are found guilty (Quadara 2014). Data relating to people engaged with police speaks more to the type of person who feels confident reporting, and where the police feel confident to intervene, than who is using and experiencing violence at a population level.
When data is collected from people who use violence through contact with police or social services (for example through L17 police referrals or completion of a risk assessment through the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management (MARAM) Framework), it is with the purpose of managing immediate risk and delivering services. Information collection and sharing scheme reform in Victoria (including establishment of the FVISS (Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme), CISS (Child Information Sharing Scheme) and CIP (Central Information Point)) that followed the Royal Commission into Family Violence delivered many positive impacts. However, issues related to consistent practice remain, resulting in incomplete referrals and thus data collection. While family, domestic and sexual violence services collect detailed information, due to the nature of their services, this data relates to the victim survivor rather than the person who used violence against them. We propose dedicated consultation with Family Safety Victoria, No to Violence, Safe and Equal, and frontline services to explore data opportunities and challenges more fully.
Population data collection and use
Flood et al.’s review (2022) of international research evidence Who uses domestic, family and sexual violence, how, and why? demonstrated that a significant minority of men use violence towards women, driven by a range of societal (norms and attitudes), institutional, community, and relational factors. The review identified that while a variety of research studies have investigated family violence perpetration internationally, Australian research remains limited, and largely focused on the experience of family violence from a victim-survivor's perspective. Within this victim-survivor focused research, there is little scope to understand the character, dynamics, pathways, intent, and context for violence (Flood, et al. 2022).
The Personal Safety Survey (PSS) collects information about people’s experiences of violence, including physical and sexual violence, emotional and economic abuse, sexual harassment, stalking and childhood abuse (ABS 2023). The data is mostly incident-focused, although data is collected on experiences of physical and sexual violence, economic and emotional abuse by a singular partner, enabling some analysis of the complexity of partner violence. This data includes how often the violence or abuse occurred, characteristics of the violence or abuse, whether it occurred during pregnancy, whether children witnessed the violence, whether police or other services were involved, anxiety and fear experienced as a result of the violence, and incidence and feelings towards leaving/returning to the partner. However, data is not currently collected on patterns of coercive control due to the complexity of measuring this form of violence (AIHW 2024). As information about the person using violence is limited to sex and relationship to victim, and as there is no additional identifying or historical information collected, the PSS is not able to tell us whether the person is a repeat offender between relationships, whether the type or severity of violence has changed over time, and the intent or impact of the violence (ABS 2023).
The National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey (NCAS) is a nationally representative survey of community attitudes towards gender equality and gender-based violence, providing useful data on several gendered drivers of violence, such as people’s support for gender equality (ANROWS 2023). Respect Victoria is currently leading a secondary analysis of Victorian NCAS data, modelling the relationship between attitudes towards gender inequality, understanding of violence against women, and attitudes towards violence against women.
The NCAS is not designed to collect data on self-reported use of or experience of violence, or on the presence of reinforcing factors, such as alcohol or pornography use. By contrast, a nationally representative perpetrator study presents an opportunity to examine the relationship between the drivers (at the individual and relationship level) and men’s use of violence, as well as where there might be opportunities to intervene to prevent men from using, or continuing to use, violence.
ANROWS’ analysis of domestic homicide inquests identified patterns in the personal histories and behaviour of people who use fatal violence against their partners (H Boxall 2022). This research identified three trajectories, or patterns of behaviour, that typically led to fatal violence:
- ‘persistent and disorderly’, characterised by consistent violence, high service interaction, and personal histories of trauma (40%)
- 'fixed threat’, characterised by highly coercive and controlling behaviour within the relationship, but well-functioning outwardly and unlikely to be engaged with services (33%), and
- ‘deterioration/acute stressor’ characterised by single instances of fatal violence that occur in otherwise non-violent relationships, usually following a crisis (11%).
This research is valuable in demonstrating that domestic homicide is most likely to occur in the context of persistent violence. However, most family violence does not result in homicide (ABS 2023) (H Boxall 2022). Therefore, the research is only reflective of people whose violence has had the most severe outcome. Research that is broader in scope and includes people whose violence that varies along the spectrum of severity and consistency would enable us to make better links between attitudes, behaviours and contextual factors, and violence use, escalation, and desistance. This would in turn contribute to design and delivery of more targeted and impactful prevention, early intervention and response initiatives.
The Man Box 2024 study, undertaken by Jesuit Social Services in partnership with Respect Victoria, explored how Australian men perceive messages about ‘what it means to be a “real man”’, and the link between these attitudes and a range of outcomes, including use of violence against an intimate partner (The Men's Project 2024). The study suggests that the more that men agree with hegemonic masculine ‘rules’, the more likely they are to express violence-supportive views and to report having used violence against an intimate partner. The Man Box 2024 study is unique amongst Australian research in linking what we know to be the primary drivers of men’s violence towards women – which represents the vast majority of family violence cases – with self-reported violence. However, there are opportunities to collect further data to better understand people’s interaction with a wider range of the gendered drivers of violence against women, and their use of a broader range of violent behaviours, as well as the pattern, severity, frequency, recidivism and desistance.