Violence and gynecologic health in women <50 years old☆,☆☆,★
Section snippets
Sample
The data are from the Commonwealth Fund's National Survey of Women's Health, conducted via telephone between Feb. 10, 1993, and March 21, 1993, by Louis Harris and Associates. A sampling strategy that created a systematic, stratified random sample of all U.S. households was used; overall 2525 women participated in the survey (response rate 56%). There was a systematic oversampling of African-American and Latina women to ensure a diversity of women in each ethnic group were represented in the
RESULTS
One fifth (20%) of the study participants were abused as children; 7.6% reported physical abuse only, and 12.4% reported being sexually abused. In the past 5 years 13.9% of participants were the victims of violent crimes (10.2% reported nonsexual crimes only, and 3.7% reported being raped or sexually assaulted). Note that married women reported the lowest rate of rape - sexual assault in the past 5 years (1.2%) and that single or divorced women reported the highest rate (8.0%). Almost 10% of
Limitations of this study
The major limitations of this study are that it is cross-sectional and depends on retrospective reporting by the respondent. It is not possible to ascribe causality to any statistical relationships that are found, and a longitudinal study would be needed to clarify the timing between violent incidents and health effects. In addition, it is likely that traumatic events such as child sexual abuse or spouse abuse are underreported because of either recall bias or social desirability bias.
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Cited by (0)
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From the College of Health Sciences, Old Dominion University, Virginia,aand the Division of General Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York.b
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Reprint requests: Stacey B. Plichta, ScD, College of Health Sciences, Old Dominion University, 200 Science Way, Room 115, Norfolk, VA 23529-0186.
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