Communicating prevalence survey results

Abstract

Over the past two decades, academics in Europe have been allocating time and funds to investigate the forms, intensity, and explanations of violence against women. This was the result of efforts of nongovernmental organizations, the feminist movement, and feminist theorists to move over to the public realm an issue whose consequences reach far beyond the private sphere to which it had previously been confined. Such surveys were also a recommendation of the Beijing Platform, given that the issue could not be adequately addressed using existing data from administrative or legal sources. Thus we have seen large-scale collection of empirical data, in order to address what has come to be recognized as a major social problem in Europe (Hagemann-White 2001; Logar 2011).