Investigating public awareness, prevailing attitudes and perceptions towards domestic violence and abuse: a qualitative study in the United Kingdom

Background: Reported Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) cases have increased since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdown. Understanding the general public’s view about DVA is vital, as it would help develop targeted interventions and effective public policies to tackle DVA. We investigated public awareness, attitudes and perceptions towards DVA, and explored mechanisms to tackle DVA in the community setting. Methods: In-depth personal interviews were conducted with 29 participants who responded to study invitations and adverts on social media. A topic guide was used to ensure consistency across the interviews, which were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically to detect emergent themes concerning DVA. Results: All respondents were aware of the concept of abuse. Thirty-eight percent declared either having experienced DVA directly or that they knew someone close to being abused. More than half of the respondents were not aware of existing DVA supportive services in the UK. Overarching themes generated from the contextual analysis included contributing factors for DVA, challenges and barriers facing victims and proposals for future interventions. Conclusions: The public has a broad understanding of the impacts of DVA. Simultaneously, the public fail to recognise specific instances or events in their daily lives. Raising public awareness, particularly in children through the school curriculum, highlighting existing support services and introducing the routine use of short screening tools for DVA in primary care can increase awareness, early identification and effective interventions. Sustained, multi-level community facing interventions are recommended to reduce stigma and fear associated with DVA

Additional file 2 of Investigating public awareness, prevailing attitudes and perceptions towards domestic violence and abuse in the United Kingdom: a qualitative study

Additional file 2. Interview Guide - core and probe questions, asked in semi structured interviews that relate to participant’s DVA experiences. The research team developed the interview topic guide after defining the research objectives and reviewing relevant literature

Additional file 5 of Investigating public awareness, prevailing attitudes and perceptions towards domestic violence and abuse in the United Kingdom: a qualitative study

Additional file 5. Preliminary codes, initial thematic framework and final categories and subcategories. A fuller description of the themes and resultant framework

Additional file 1 of Investigating public awareness, prevailing attitudes and perceptions towards domestic violence and abuse in the United Kingdom: a qualitative study

Additional file 1. Methods. A full description of the method

Additional file 3 of Investigating public awareness, prevailing attitudes and perceptions towards domestic violence and abuse in the United Kingdom: a qualitative study

Additional file 3. COREQ checklist. COREQ was used to guide reporting

Additional file 4 of Investigating public awareness, prevailing attitudes and perceptions towards domestic violence and abuse in the United Kingdom: a qualitative study

Additional file 4. Preliminary codes and related illustrative quotes. A fuller description of the preliminary codes and quotations from individual participants