Violence - Most recent incident

Information was obtained from men and women aged 18 years and over in the 2021-22 PSS who had experienced any incident of violence within the last 10 years involving:

• the occurrence or attempt of either physical or sexual assault
• the threat of either physical or sexual assault.

An incident refers to an occurrence, attempt, or threat of either physical or sexual assault experienced by an individual.

Respondents were asked about the details of the most recent incident for 7 types of violence:

1. Sexual assault by a male perpetrator
2. Sexual assault by a female perpetrator
3. Sexual threat by a male perpetrator (female respondents only)
4. Physical assault by a male perpetrator
5. Physical assault by a female perpetrator
6. Physical threat by a male perpetrator
7. Physical threat by a female perpetrator

Where the respondent may have been involved in continuous acts of a particular type of violence, they were instructed to only think about the most recent incident of that type of violence when answering the questions. This chapter covers details regarding the most recent incident (MRI) for each of these 7 types of violence.
 

Relationship to perpetrator in MRI data refers to the perpetrator of the most recent incident only. In instances where more than one perpetrator was involved in the incident, respondents were asked to select the person that they thought was mainly responsible.

The Violence MRI topic is designed to collect detailed information about the most recent incident of violence experienced in the last 10 years, for selected types of violence. For information about how the types of violence were collected, please refer to the Violence – Prevalence chapter.

The detailed information collected in Violence MRI includes characteristics of the incident itself, actions taken following the incident, and the impacts of the incident on the respondent. For example:

• The relationship of the perpetrator to the respondent
• The location of the incident
• Whether alcohol or any other substance was involved
• Whether the incident was reported to police
• Whether advice or support were sought after the incident
• Whether anxiety or fear was felt following the incident
• Whether any time was taken off work because of the incident

Detailed MRI information was not collected:

• if the most recent incident occurred more than 10 years ago – due to potential difficulties associated with recalling the incident.
• for the most recent incident of sexual threat by a male perpetrator (for male respondents) or by a female perpetrator (for both male and female respondents). Due to their low prevalence, reliable estimates about the characteristics of the MRI for these violence types are unable to be produced.

Further information regarding the collection of the following data items in the MRI topic:

• Police contact – The word ‘contacted’ was open to the respondent’s interpretation and may include both contact that did and did not amount to a formal report. Police may have been contacted by the respondent or someone else.
• Involvement of alcohol or any other substance – This includes any licit or illicit mood-altering substance. Includes where the respondent or the perpetrator had been drinking alcohol or using any other mood/behaviour-altering substance or were hung-over from alcohol or still recovering from the use of any other substance.
• Consulting doctor or other health provider about physical injuries sustained – This includes doctors in private practice, health centres, hospitals, emergency services etc. Includes only health practitioners who were visited for the treatment of injuries, and excludes visits to the doctor or any other health professional that were not for the purpose of treating injuries (e.g. counselling session).
• Sources of advice or support – Includes formal and informal sources of advice or support. Excludes anyone who was told or found out about the incident, but from whom the respondent did not actively seek advice or support (e.g. treatment sought for injuries which did not involve the respondent seeking advice or support).
• First person told – Includes telling anyone, from a friend to a formal service provider. The respondent did not necessarily have to seek advice or support from the person (e.g. the person may tell the police about the violence without perceiving this as seeking advice or support from them).
• Experience of anxiety or fear – If the anxiety or fear varied over time, respondents were asked to determine how often they experienced anxiety or fear on average during the 12 months after the incident.

The data items and related output categories for this topic are contained within the Violence Most Recent Incident tab in the data item list available under Downloads.

Violence MRI data can be used to examine:

• the characteristics and nature of violent incidents, including information about the perpetrator, the violent behaviours involved, the location, whether alcohol or any other substance was involved, and whether physical injuries were sustained
• the actions taken in response to violent incidents, including whether the incident was reported to police and whether advice or support was sought after the incident
• the longer-term impacts of violent incidents, including whether anxiety or fear was experienced following the incident, whether time was taken off work, and whether changes were made to usual routine because of the incident
• differences between men and women, and other socio-demographic groups of interest, in the ways in which different types of violence are experienced.

Violence MRI data cannot be used to examine:

• the characteristics and nature of all incidents of violence ever experienced, as only information about the most recent incident that occurred in the last 10 years is collected for each type of violence
• the total number of violent incidents experienced
• the prevalence of particular types of violence in the population – the Violence – Prevalence topic has been designed to produce this data.

Points to be considered when using and interpreting data from this topic include:

• Violence MRI data is a subset of violence prevalence data and should not be used to estimate the prevalence of particular types of violence in the population, which the Violence Prevalence topic has been designed to do. This is because information is not collected about all incidents of each of the seven types of violence – only the most recent one. For example, a respondent may have experienced physical assault by a male stranger, and physical assault by a male previous partner. These are two incidents of the same type of violence – physical assault by a male. Information will be collected about only the more recent of the two incidents in the Violence MRI topic.
• Violence MRI data relates to the most recent incident of violence experienced only and is therefore not necessarily representative of all incidents of violence. Care should be taken in the way most recent incident data is interpreted and reported, and users should refrain from generalising the findings to all incidents. The estimates always represent the number and proportion of persons, rather than incidents (e.g. 70% of persons contacted the police about the most recent incident, rather than police being contacted about 70% of all incidents).
• Violence MRI data cannot be added across the different types of violence to produce an aggregated total for any of the data items. Persons may have experienced more than one type of violence and are included separately for each type they have experienced. As a person's experiences and subsequent actions may differ depending on the type of violence they experienced, conceptually it would be invalid to add together actions for all the different types of violence. For example, if a respondent had sought advice or support about their most recent incident of physical assault by a male but had not sought advice or support about their most recent incident of sexual assault by a male, they would be included in both categories if the data were simply combined. Consequently, violence MRI data should only be presented and analysed individually per the seven violence types.
• The same incident cannot be reported in more than one of the seven types of violence in the MRI topic. Instances in which a respondent experienced multiple types of violence within the one incident can only be reported once. For example, if a respondent who has been sexually assaulted has also experienced some of the behaviours which are classified as physical assault during the same incident (for example being slapped), information about the incident is only recorded as an incident of sexual assault (as per the hierarchy of violence types described in the Violence – Prevalence chapter), and not physical assault.

Information about the most recent incident of violence was collected in all previous editions of the PSS, as well as the 1996 Women’s Safety Survey (WSS). The following should be noted when making comparisons:

• Analysis of changes over time are not recommended for timeframes that overlap.
• Detailed information about the most recent incident was not collected in the 2016 and 2021-22 PSS if the most recent incident occurred more than 10 years ago. This differs from the 1996 WSS and the 2005 and 2012 PSS, where detailed information was collected for incidents that occurred up to 20 years ago. This change was made due to reported difficulties respondents had with recalling the details of incidents that occurred more than 10 years ago, and also to reduce respondent burden. MRI data is still considered broadly comparable across the time series despite the change in timeframe from 2016 onwards.
• In contrast to the 2005 and 2012 PSS, the 2016 and 2021-22 PSS did not collect information about the most recent incident of sexual threat by a female for both male and female respondents, or the most recent incident of sexual threat by a male for male respondents, due to these being lower prevalence types of violence with higher levels of statistical error, for which reliable data is unable to be produced. The 1996 WSS also did not collect information about the most recent incident of sexual threat by a female.
• 'All reasons police contacted about most recent incident of assault' is a new data item in 2021-22, therefore comparative data from previous cycles in not available.