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Domestic Abuse Against Men in Scotland
APPENDIX A - THE REPRESENTATIVENESS OF OUR SUB-SAMPLE
Using a series of chi-square tests we checked to see if the 46 men we traced were statistically similar to the 44 men we could not trace in terms of their levels of victimisation, time frame when victimised, relationships with the perpetrators, and whether they considered themselves 'victims'. Observable differences between these groups would indicate that our sample did not represent the group and delimit the inferences that could be made about the general population of male victims using our results.
We found:
- No significant differences between the two groups regarding the time of their abuse; chi-square tests showed that similar proportions of men in both groups reported abuse prior to 1999 85 and since 1999 86.
- No significant difference between the two groups based upon whether the men thought they were victims of domestic violence or not 87.
- No significant difference between the two groups with regards to the victims' relationship with the perpetrator 88.
We ran similar tests to see if there were any significant differences between the 30 men we interviewed in person and the larger sample of 60 who we did not interview, in terms of the timing of the abuse, whether they thought they were victims, and their relationships with the perpetrator. Again, we found no significant differences.
However, when we compared the demographic composition of our sample of 46 men with the remaining 44 victims whose details we received, it became apparent that our group was not similar in some important respects. Whilst there were no significant differences based on factors such as age, marital status and experience of living in rented accommodation, we did observe significant differences based upon long-term illness, employment status, social class, annual income and the ability to gain access to money quickly.
The group of 46 men about whom we obtained qualitative information were, collectively, more likely to report having a long-standing illness than the 44 men who we were not able to contact 89. The group of 46 men were also more likely to be in full-time employment 90, have an annual income of over 20,000 91, be in a higher social class band 92 and have no problem gaining immediate access to 20 93, 100 94 and 1,000 95 than those men whom we were unable to contact. In short, these 46 men were in poorer health, but generally wealthier than the full SCS sample.
We conducted these same tests for the demographic composition of the 30 men with whom we conducted in-depth interviews. In contrast to the tests with the 46 men, the sub-sample of 30 men were generally similar to the 60 men who were not interviewed in-depth. No significant differences were observed for factors such as age, marital status, long-term illness, employment status, annual income, experience of living in rented accommodation and the ability to gain quick access to money. Indeed, the only demographic feature that we tested for which highlighted any statistically significant difference between the 30 men interviewed in depth and the 60 not interviewed in-depth was social class. The composition of the sub-sample of 30 men interviewed in-depth was skewed slightly more towards bands A, B and C1 than the larger sample of 60 men not interviewed in-depth 96.
Differences between the 'confirmers' and the 'refuters'
We tested to see if there were any significant differences between those men who were 'confirmers' and those who were 'refuters'. Our rationale for doing this was to see if there was any way in which those men who said that the SCS 2000 record was inaccurate could have been identified without further follow-up interviews. Unfortunately, we found no significant differences between the confirmers and refuters that would enable this kind of predictive differentiation. For example, confirmers were twice as likely as refuters to tick the box saying that they considered themselves to be 'victims of domestic violence', but two men who were discovered to be refuters also ticked this box. One of these men claimed the violent incident he was referring to in the SCS involved a stranger in a shop. This man was heavily intoxicated at the time of our interview with him. The other man who inaccurately described himself as a victim of domestic abuse refuted these claims by telephone, explaining that he had never participated in the Scottish Crime Survey, that he had never been in a relationship, and also that he was 71 years old. This man insisted that no-one else of the same (or similar) name had ever lived at his address.
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