Public Justification of Intimate Partner Violence: A Review of the Literature

Understanding the extent to which the general public justifies intimate partner violence (IPV) is necessarily to explain perpetration, victimization, and response to this behavior. This article provides a literature review of quantitative studies measuring IPV justification among the general population. Key word searching of two databases plus bibliographies, and the web yielded 23 studies that provided comparable measures of IPV justification. Results are summarized for the prevalence of IPV justification identified for each country including differences in justification based on the initiating event (e.g., burning food and infidelity), sociodemographic differences in justification and differences across countries. No study identified a zero prevalence of IPV justification and percentages varied considerably across and within countries. Females tended to report a higher rate of IPV justification than males and younger respondents tended to report a higher rate IPV justification than their older counterparts. Further research is needed to understand IPV justification within and across nations as well as to explore the impact this has on IPV prevalence and policy.