Intimate partner violence in Hong Kong : findings from a territory-wide telephone survey

Through telephone interviews with respondents selected from random sampling, this study attempts to study the extent of the intimate partner violence problem as identified by an abbreviated version of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2S) and to compare it with that found by Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2). Results based on the CTS2S show that the prevalence of respondents who had ever caused psychological aggression to their spouse is 39.2%, physical assault 7.3%, and injury 3.8%. Percentage of respondents who had severely perpetrated their partner psychologically, physically, and injuriously are 5.2%, 3.6%, and 1.7% respectively. In over 40% of the cases, both parties had participated in the violence acts. The extent of intimate partner violence in Hong Kong as identified by the CTS2S is lower than those found by the CTS2 in this study and in previous studies. This suggests that findings on the prevalence of intimate partner violence are sensitive to the tools that are used for surveying the problem.