Associations of Everyday Discrimination and Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Perpetration

Background and Purpose: Intimate partner violence (IPV) continues to be a pervasive issue in the United States, with gender and racial/ethnic minorities bearing a disproportionate burden of IPV. Prior research has utilized a social-ecological approach to connect social structures that maintain inequity to an individual’s increased risk of both victimization and perpetration. As individuals with marginalized identities experience unique forms of stress, this study aims to test a theoretical model adapting Frost and Meyer’s (2023) minority stress theory and Anglin et al. (2021)’s hypothesized model of systemic racism to explore associations between discrimination and IPV. Understanding an aspect of structural inequity through everyday discrimination, the present study aims to 1) examine associations between respondents’ everyday discrimination score and experience of only victimization, only perpetration, or dual victimization and perpetration; and 2) determine whether family or friend support might moderate these associations.

Methods: This study utilizes data from the National Couples’ Health and Time Study (NCHAT) dataset (N=3,642), a population-based survey of couples in the United States containing representative samples of racial and ethnic diverse and sexual and gender diverse individuals, collected between September 2020 to April 2021. The final analytic sample of this study consists of 3,346 respondents (49% male, 47% female, and 4% transgender/non-binary), which excludes missing values. Multinomial logit regression examines associations between everyday discrimination and IPV experience type (only victimization; only perpetration; dual victimization and perpetration), compared to respondents with no IPV experience (82%).

Results: The multinomial logistic regression model results show that, after controlling for demographic variables, as respondents’ everyday discrimination score increases by one unit, respectively, the risk of experiencing only victimization increases by 13% (RRR=1.13, p<0.0001), the risk of experiencing dual victimization and perpetration increases by 16% (RRR=1.16, p<0.0001), and only perpetration by 4% (RRR=1.04, p=0.043) compared to those who haven’t experienced IPV. Family and friend support were included in a second model, which did not have a meaningful impact on only victimization or dual victimization/perpetration. However, friend support decreased the risk of only perpetration by 17% (RRR=0.83, p=0.029), and the everyday discrimination score was no longer significant compared to those who hadn’t experienced IPV.

Conclusions and Implications: The results highlight important associations between experiences of discrimination and IPV, demonstrating a need to address everyday discrimination specifically within IPV interventions. Findings also suggest that building ways to foster community within IPV perpetration interventions may help mitigate causing harm. This study highlights gaps in literature and programming by integrating minority stress theory into the IPV narrative, suggesting that deconstructing structural inequality factors like discrimination is a potential pathway for IPV intervention. Innovations ranging from restorative to transformative justice may provide an avenue for practitioners and future research should explore structural oppression as a potential fundamental cause of IPV.