Intimate Partner Violence and Additional Victim-Offender Relationships: An Examination of Gender and Other Differences in Victim Fear Using National Crime Victimization Survey Data.

Abstract

Research addressing the link between victimization experiences and fear of crime finds that intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization is also of consequence, with victims of IPV being more fearful than non-IPV victims. Though research on the IPV-fear link is plentiful, there is an absence of focusing exclusively on crime victims. The focus of this research is on the potential differential effects of IPV and other types of victimization on victims' fear and if it delineates to gender differences in victimization type and victim fear. This study uses the National Crime Victimization Survey data to examine whether IPV victims display higher levels of fear compared to victims of other relationship types and whether these relationships hold for males and females. Results indicate that IPV victimization does have a positive relationship with fear and that the effect is evident among females but not males.