COVID-19, Intimate Partner Violence, and Female Stress and Resilience

Background and purpose: The global outbreak of COVID-19 has infected and killed millions of people world-wide (John Hopkins University, 2020). Before the pandemic led to global lockdowns, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated 1 in 3 women have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner at some point in their lives (WHO, 2017). Key public health strategies like social distancing, social isolation, and stay-at-home orders, when adequately followed, have slowed the spread of COVID-19 but have created model conditions for intimate partner violence (IPV) to thrive (Holmes et al., 2020). The purpose of this study was to investigate levels of perceived stress and individual resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic amongst a) male and female survey respondents; b) non-IPV reporting and IPV-reporting female survey respondents; and c) white female and racial/ethnic minority female survey respondents.

Methods: This study utilizes a cross-sectional design. Data were collected over a 2-month period from an online survey launched the first week of April, 2020. The self-administered 10-minute online survey was distributed through one of the researcher’s personal social media accounts (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn) and advertised on the Tulane University School of Social Work’s social media outlets and website for a period of 2 months. The main inclusion criteria for the online survey required participants to be older than 18 years and have direct access to the survey link. The survey focus was on participants’ (a) previous disaster experience, (b) perceived stress (i.e., PSS), (c) resilience (CD-RISC10) (d) current situation as it relates to COVID-19, (e) experienced IPV, and (f) personal and household demographics. The sample for this study includes 374 adults who completed the online survey. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 26.

Results: Results indicated females had higher levels of stress compared to males (t(365) = -2.744, p=.006, d =.324), while males exhibited higher levels of resilience (t(376) = 2.303, p=.022, d =.286). IPV-reporting females evidenced higher levels of perceived stress than non-IPV reporting females (t(272) = -3.228, p=.001, d =.608), while non-IPV reports exhibited greater resilience (t(273) = 4.740, p=.001, d =.876). While not a statistically significant difference, racial and ethnic minority females evidenced higher levels of perceived stress than white females, while white females showed slightly higher levels of resilience.

Conclusions and Implications: The results of this study are important because they represent one of the first assessments of the experiences of females regarding perceived stress and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although not a statistically significant difference between the groups, perceived stress and resilience scores suggests racial and ethnic minority females exhibited higher levels of perceived stress, while white females had slightly higher levels of resilience. Given the persistent racial discrimination that has been further highlighted by COVID-19 exacerbated racial health disparities (Hooper et al., 2020) and racial uprisings across the U.S. this past summer (2020), it makes intuitive sense that minority females would experience greater levels of perceived stress. This research is important because in the relationship between race, IPV and disaster is often overlooked.