A new nationwide study finds that a combination of factors increases the risk of a woman being murdered by her partner, Health Day News reported July 11.
The strongest social-risk factor, according to the study, is unemployment. When coupled with other factors, such as access to guns, threats to kill, a controlling behavior, and the presence of a stepchild in the home, the risk of a woman being murdered by her partner increases more than fivefold.
"Such information can be useful in preventing these killings," said principal investigator Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. "In the United States, women are killed by intimate partners more often than by any other type of perpetrator, with the majority of these murders involving prior physical abuse. Determining key risk factors, over and above a history of domestic violence, that contribute to the abuse that escalates to murder will help us identify and intervene with battered women who are most at risk."
The research was based on interviews with family members and acquaintances of 220 women in 11 cities who were killed by their partners, as well as 343 women who reported physical abuse during the past two years.
The study's findings are published in the July 2003 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
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