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Lacalle-Calderon, MAuthor

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August 30, 2021
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Measuring Violence Against Women: A Global Index

Publicated to:JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE. 37 (19-20): 8862605211037424-NP18638 - 2022-01-01 37(19-20), DOI: 10.1177/08862605211037424

Authors: Cepeda, Isabel; Lacalle-Calderon, Maricruz; Torralba, Miguel

Affiliations

Univ Alcala De Henares, Guadalajara, Spain - Author
Univ Autonoma Madrid, Madrid, Spain - Author
Univ Rey Juan Carlos, Dept Econ Hist & Moral Philosophy, Madrid, Spain - Author

Abstract

Violence against women (VaW) is a widespread crime and violation of the rights of women. It is present in every country without exception and crosses boundaries of culture, class, education, income, and race. Despite the magnitude of the literature and the abundance of publications on this problem, the field lacks a comprehensive and homogeneous way to measure and compare the extent of VaW across countries. Proper quantification of this problem is needed to develop preventive policies and strategies to reduce it. This article develops an index of VaW (VAWI) with global scope and multidimensional approach for 102 countries. It is an original index that calculates the total level of VaW by capturing information from the main VaW types (physical, sexual, psychological, and economic violence) in a single value between 0 and 1, where 0 denotes complete absence of violence and 1 the highest level of violence in a country. The proposed index is easy to compute and is comparable across countries. Our main results show that the nations with the highest levels of global VaW are Yemen, Senegal, Oman, Cameroon, and Uganda. The countries with the lowest levels are the Northern European Countries, Canada, and Malta. This VAWI makes a novel and important contribution to the study of gender issues. It can be used not only to monitor the statistics on VaW data within countries over time but also to make comparisons among countries. Further, it could be useful in designing new policy initiatives to reduce VaW.

Keywords

battered womencultural contextsdomestic violenceperceptions of domestic violenceAdultArticleBattered womanBattered womenCameroonCanadaControlled studyCrimeCultural contextsDomestic violenceFemaleGenderHealthHumanHuman experimentHumansIncomeMaleMaltaOmanPerceptionPerceptions of domestic violencePolicySenegalSexual assaultUgandaViolenceYemen

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2022, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Clinical Psychology.

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from World Citations provided by WoS (ESI, Clarivate), it yields a value for the citation normalization relative to the expected citation rate of: 15.18. This indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: ESI Nov 14, 2024)

This information is reinforced by other indicators of the same type, which, although dynamic over time and dependent on the set of average global citations at the time of their calculation, consistently position the work at some point among the top 50% most cited in its field:

  • Weighted Average of Normalized Impact by the Scopus agency: 3.39 (source consulted: FECYT Feb 2024)
  • Field Citation Ratio (FCR) from Dimensions: 16.45 (source consulted: Dimensions Jul 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-07-16, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 17
  • Scopus: 19
  • Europe PMC: 8
  • Google Scholar: 38

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-07-16:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 57.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 66 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 7.35.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 6 (Altmetric).