FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2903
You asked
I am concerned about the ONS's criteria for evaluating its empirical research in regards to controlling or coercive behaviour (CCB). It seems that the data quality is being evaluated against presuppositions of what the results ought to be, rather than whether the data is robust. From the ONS April 2019 report:
"Specifically, we have evaluated them using the following research questions: ....were any differences between how males and females responded to the controlling or coercive behaviour impacts as expected?"
Please supply the following information:
The source of this expectation and provide any technical publications upon which it was based.
A list of the advisor / advisor entities to the ONS in developing its measures of CCB.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
As part of the wider redevelopment of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), we are undertaking research to redevelop the domestic abuse self-completion module. The questions on domestic abuse have largely remained the same since April 2004, allowing for a long comparable time series.
However, the definition of domestic abuse has changed since the questions were first included in the survey, and now covers controlling or coercive behaviour. Our research aims to address a number of issues with the current domestic abuse questions, including improving the prevalence measure of domestic abuse to capture the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour.
Our April 2019 publication 'Developing a measure for controlling or coercive behaviour' outlined our initial research into new questions aimed at measuring controlling or coercive behaviour.
Those questions were developed and evaluated through our Domestic Abuse Statistics Steering Group (DASSG), by drawing on both the legislative guidance and advice from members of the group who are topic experts, many of whom had worked closely with victims of this type of domestic abuse.
The expected results of the research that you have quoted were presented in line with the advice of the experts in the steering group. Further information is available in section 6 of the publication including reference to an external research paper. A list of the steering group members can be found in Annex A of the publication.
Our analysis of the controlling or coercive behaviour questions trialled at that time highlighted that there was uncertainty in whether the measure adequately captured victims of the offence as outlined in the statutory guidance.
Working closely with the topic experts, it was decided that the questions required further development, refinement, and testing before we could be confident that they were fit for purpose. The questions tested in the split-sample experiment were also removed from the survey in April 2019 to allow this work to take place.
Our research to develop survey questions to measure controlling or coercive behaviour is ongoing and forms part of our wider redevelopment work. An update on our research will be published alongside our annual domestic abuse publication in November.
If you have any further questions, please email us at crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk.