Domestic Violence and its Predictors among Married Women in Southeast Nigeria

Background Domestic violence is a public health problem that is global in scope. Violence targeting women is a frequent occurrence, it tends to go under documented in most countries. It has far reaching consequences on female victims and their children. There are murders that are an offshoot of domestic violence. It is a social blight that is seen with regularity in Nigeria. This study aims to determine the roles of age of victims, family size, educational attainment and employment status on violence against women who are married. Materials and Methods A cross sectional study of prospectively consenting women within 10 orthodox churches in the eastern town of Orlu, Nigeria during a period between 1st August to 31st August 2016. A total of 682 respondents were recruited and given structured questionnaires, assistance was offered where there were incompletely filled questionnaires due to misunderstood questions which were then explained in very simple terms and subsequently filled out. Using a 95 % confidence interval, 5 % margin of error, population proportion of 0.5, the minimum sample size was calculated as 384 using the Cochrans formula for sample size. The data was then analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 18. Results Three hundred and eighty two respondents (56 %) out of the total study population of 682 (100 %) had experienced domestic violence while 300 (44 %) had not. One hundred and thirty women (34 %) sustained varying degrees of injuries, with 66 (17.3 %) of them suffering pregnancy loss as a consequence of abuse. Two hundred and twenty four women (32.8 %) had experienced only one form of abuse while 158 (23.2 %) reported multiple forms of abuse. Violence against women most prevalent among women within the 25 34 years age range constituting a total of 170 (44.5 %) cases of abuse. Those married women with only primary education formed the subset that had the greatest number of abused women, 138 cases (38.1 %). Conclusion Domestic violence is a pervasive problem in Nigeria with greater than 50 % of the married women in this study having been abused by their partners. Unemployment of the woman, younger married women, poor educational attainment and a large number of living children were identified as factors that increased the risk of domestic violence.