National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS)

Abstract

The National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) is a foundational, nationally representative epidemiological study sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Justice. Conducted primarily between 1995 and 1996, the NVAWS was designed to generate comprehensive, robust data concerning the prevalence, nature, and consequences of various forms of violence experienced by women aged 18 and older in the United States. The instrument systematically measures lifetime and past-year victimization, encompassing key domains such as physical violence, sexual violence, psychological aggression, and stalking. The resulting dataset has served as a crucial resource, informing public health policy, legislative responses, and prevention programs targeting gender-based violence.

Keywords

NVAWS, violence against women, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, stalking, sexual violence, physical violence, psychological aggression, prevalence, victimization, CDC

Authors

While the NVAWS was a joint government initiative, the core methodology and initial seminal findings, particularly those related to stalking and intimate partner violence, were reported by Tjaden P and Thoennes N.

Purpose

The fundamental purpose of the NVAWS is to establish rigorous quantitative measures for the extent and characteristics of violence, including physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, experienced by women across the nation. Beyond simply calculating prevalence rates, the survey aims to capture detailed contextual information, such as the relationship between the victim and perpetrator, the influence of substances, and the resulting physical and mental health consequences. This comprehensive approach ensures that the findings are actionable for developing targeted public health interventions and informing legislative frameworks.

A significant contribution of the instrument is its provision of clear, rigorous operational definitions for specific behaviors, most notably stalking. The specific items related to intimate partner violence (IPV) and stalking derived from the NVAWS are widely adopted in subsequent research. The instrument is officially recognized and featured in the CDC’s resource compilation, “Measuring Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Perpetration: A Compendium of Assessment Tools.” The original PDF resource can be downloaded here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/IPV_Compendium.pdf.

Construct

The NVAWS is meticulously designed to operationalize and measure the complex construct of interpersonal victimization across several distinct dimensions. Key constructs assessed by the survey include:

• Physical Violence: Defined as acts involving the use of physical force or credible threats of harm directed toward the victim.
• Sexual Violence: Encompassing a range of non-consensual sexual acts, including rape and sexual coercion.
• Psychological Aggression: Non-physical behaviors utilized to control, manipulate, or inflict emotional damage upon the victim.
• Stalking: Operationalized as a pattern of repeated, unwanted attention and harassment that induces fear or distress. Crucially, the NVAWS defines a stalking victim not solely based on the perpetrator’s behavior, but by requiring the victim’s subjective experience of high fear or belief in serious physical harm, aligning the measure with established legal and psychological standards.

Validity

The NVAWS demonstrates high levels of external validity due to its methodology as a nationally representative sample, ensuring that the findings accurately reflect the true prevalence of violence against women across the diverse population of the United States. The use of highly structured, behaviorally specific questions minimizes ambiguity and reduces potential recall bias, thereby contributing to strong content validity across the instrument’s modules.

Regarding the stalking module, the instrument exhibits robust operational validity. Classification as a stalking victim requires meeting two distinct criteria: (1) experiencing multiple instances of specific harassing behaviors, combined with (2) reporting a high level of fear or believing in the possibility of serious physical harm. This multi-criteria approach ensures that the resulting estimates of stalking are clinically and legally salient, effectively differentiating serious victimization from isolated incidents of annoyance or harassment.

Reliability

While the NVAWS is an epidemiological survey and does not typically report traditional internal consistency metrics (like Cronbach’s alpha) for its subscales, its reliability is maintained through rigorous procedural standardization. The use of carefully scripted interview protocols and extensive training provided to interviewers ensured high consistency in data collection across the large and geographically dispersed national sample. Subsequent secondary analyses and follow-up studies utilizing NVAWS data have consistently affirmed the stability and robustness of the core behavioral measures, particularly those related to physical and sexual violence.

Factor Analysis

As the NVAWS is structured as a comprehensive, large-scale epidemiological survey rather than a singular psychometric scale designed to measure one latent trait, traditional factor analysis is not applied to the instrument as a whole. Instead, factor analytic techniques are typically employed on derived subscales (e.g., measuring the severity or typologies of intimate partner violence) in subsequent research. Research stemming from the NVAWS data has consistently supported the distinction between various categories of violence, such as physical, sexual, and psychological aggression, confirming that these represent distinct, although often co-occurring, dimensions of victimization. The stalking module functions as a specialized, composite measure defined by specific, required behavioral and emotional criteria, rather than a factor-analyzed scale.

Instrument

Test Type: Epidemiological Survey / Behavioral Assessment Tool

Format: Structured Interview/Questionnaire (Likely administered via Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing or in-person interview during the original data collection period)

Language Available: English (Primary data collection language)

Population Group: Adult women in the United States

Age Group: 18 years and older

Population Details: Nationally representative sample of women residing in the United States.

Test Methodology: Collection of self-reported lifetime and past-year experiences of violence, including detailed assessment of perpetrator characteristics, context of the violence, and resulting physical and psychological consequences.

Keywords

sexual assault, domestic abuse, intimate partner stalking, psychological trauma, public health surveillance, data collection, CDC, National Institute of Justice, violence against women

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (General survey report; specific ORCIDs depend on subsequent research papers utilizing the dataset)

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A (Affiliated primarily with the CDC and Department of Justice during the 1995-1996 data collection)

Correspondence Address: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The NVAWS data are considered public domain and are generally made available through official government data archives, such as the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). This accessibility allows for extensive secondary analysis, often without a direct fee for academic researchers. The core data collection period for the survey was 1995–1996. The specific report detailing the stalking findings, which established the scale’s operational criteria, was published in 1998.

Reference’s

• Tjaden P, Thoennes N. Stalking in America: findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. Washington (DC): Dept. of Justice (US), National Institute of Justice; 1998. Report No.: NCJ 169592.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Measuring Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Perpetration: A Compendium of Assessment Tools. Available online at: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/IPV_Compendium.pdf.

Items of the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. I’d like to ask you some questions about following or harassment you may have experienced on more thanone occasion by strangers‚ friends‚ relatives‚ or even husbands (wives)‚ and partners. Not including billcollectors‚ telephone solicitors‚ or other sales people‚ has anyone‚ male or female‚ ever:

1. Followed or spied on you?
2. Sent you unsolicited letters or written correspondence?
3. Made unsolicited phone calls to you?
4. Stood outside your home‚ school‚ or workplace?
5. Showed up at places you were even though he or she had no business being there?
6. Left unwanted items for you to find?
7. Tried to communicate in other ways against your will?
8. Vandalized your property or destroyed something you loved?

If respondent answered “yes” to one or more of the above questions‚ then she/he is asked:

2. Has anyone ever done any of these things to you on more than one occasion?

If respondent reported being victimized on more than one occasion‚ he/she is asked the following questions:

3. How frightened were you by these things [perpetrator] did to you?

1. very frightened?
2. somewhat frightened?
3. just a little frightened?
4. not really frightened?

4. Did you ever believe you or someone close to you would be seriously harmed or killed when [perpetrator] was following or harassing you?

Note: Scale can be used to assess stalking by non-partners.

To be considered a stalking victim‚ respondent has to report experiencing one or more of the stalking behaviors (items a–h) on more than one occasion (#2) and reports ha‎ving been very frightened or feared bodily harm to them or someone close to them (#3 and #4)