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Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a social issue that continues to haunt humans globally. Despite the magnitude of research that has been conducted, the Sustainable Developmental Goals target 5.2, and the South African proposed National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, South Africa experiences high incidences of IPV. In heterosexual couples, violence incidences are a concern that requires further research by scholars because cohabiting relationships are an increasing phenomenon within the African context. This study attempts to theorize from an African philosophical stance, focusing particularly on the African psychological perspective. In this chapter, The authors illuminate the nature and forms of violence that manifest in cohabiting relationships. This research explores participants’ experiences of IPV in cohabiting relationships.

This enquiry has been conceptualized using a qualitative constructivism paradigm with in-depth, unstructured one-on-one interviews. Interviews were conducted with 10 participants between the ages of 18 and 24 years recruited from the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme in Vhembe District in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Thematic analysis was used to generate themes while narrative analysis was used for the participants’ stories. Participants shared their self-reflections on their IPV experiences, deciding to leave their relationships, and threats from their partners when they tried to leave the relationships.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent public health issue impacting women’s physical and mental health and psychosocial walks of life across cultures and societies. Despite this, many women continue to stay in such relationships. This study aims to examine, from a constructionist perspective, why women stay in abusive marriages and what factors prevent them from taking appropriate actions. Also, women’s experiences of surviving IPV were explored.

Using a descriptive qualitative research method, the authors recruited and interviewed 17 women from northern India. The data were analysed thematically.

The underlying themes that emerged in response to the research questions were the lack of family support, societal ideals, the culture of normalizing violence, fear, love and hope and emotional turmoil. The reason for women not to leave abusive marriages corresponds to the broader social constructions of marriage and women’s perceived positions in family and society.

Research on women’s decision to stay in abusive relationships is limited, especially from the Global South. This study generates fresh evidence on the subject matter, specifically from the Indian context. The study result contributes uniquely by approaching the problem of staying in an abusive relationship from a social constructionist perspective. This study has implications for policy and psychosocial interventions to bring progressive changes in the lives of women experiencing IPV.

Social psychology has focused on an individual’s reaction to emergencies and witnessing a crime, which has developed theories of bystander intervention and bystander apathy. The purpose of this study is to explore why people choose to intervene when they are a bystander to intimate partner violence (IPV) and the psychological processes that underpin this. Decision-making was explored drawing on literature from the whistleblowing field.

Through a mixed methods epistemology, this study explored factors that explained intervening behaviour concerning IPV. In total, 212 participants who had known someone who was a victim of IPV were recruited from the general population.

A logistic regression model indicated that conscientiousness and fairness were found to predict intervening behaviour. Being a child witness was found to predict non-intervening behaviour. Qualitative analysis revealed three types of bystander apathy: those who lacked capability as they were children; those who were indifferent and did not see it as their place to intervene; and those who wanted to intervene but did not as they were frightened of exacerbating the situation.

IPV has significant physical and psychological effects on victims. However, the choice to intervene is complex, and bystander intervention in this study was also associated in some cases with not only a continuation of the IPV behaviour towards the victim but also aggression and physical violence towards the bystander (whistleblower retaliation). Based on the findings of this study, recommendations are made for how to support bystanders and victims of IPV.

This study involved participants with real-life experience of being a bystander to IPV. The mixed methodology provided an insight into the psychological processes, which underpin bystander experiences of IPV and maps onto the literature in relation to whistleblowing.

This study aims to build on existing literature on face-to-face aggression in intimate relationships and adopts Finkel’s I³ theory to investigate the relationship between adult attachment style, dispositional self-control and cyber intimate partner aggression (IPA) perpetration and victimization.

Participants (N = 173) 20–52 years of age (M = 32.75 years, SD = 7.73, mode = 29 years) completed a series of standardized online measures to assess anxious and avoidant attachment, dispositional self-control and experience of cyber IPA (psychological, sexual and stalking), as both a perpetrator and victim.

Avoidant attachment was associated with increased perpetration of stalking and psychological abuse. Those high on avoidant attachment were also more likely to report that they were victims of cyber IPA psychological abuse and stalking. Self-control did not predict experience of cyber IPA, as a perpetrator or victim. Interactions between self-control and attachment were also non-significant.

This study addressed the paucity of cyber IPA research conducted with adult populations, by examining processes and factors to improve understanding of the experiences of online perpetration and victimization. The study also found evidence for the importance of impellance factors but not inhibiting factors (Finkel, 2008).

The emotion regulation research has drawn considerable attention from academicians and scholars in the contemporary world. As a result, the publications that are specifically dedicated to emotion regulation research are rapidly escalating. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of research articles that have been published in the field of “emotion regulation.” The study primarily examines the growth and development of scholarly publications, seminal studies, influential authors, productive journals, research production and collaboration among countries, emerging research themes, research hotspots and thematic evolution of emotion regulation research.

The Web of Science Core Collection database was used to gather the study’s data, which was then analysed using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix, Biblioshiney open-source package of the R language environment.

The study’s results reveal that the research on emotion regulation has grown significantly over the last three decades. Notably, Emotion and Frontiers in Psychology are the most dominant and productive journals in the field of emotion regulation research. The most prominent author in the area of emotion regulation is identified as James Gross, followed by Gratz, Wang and Tull. The USA is at the forefront of research on emotion regulation and has collaborated with most of the developed countries like Germany, England and Canada. The keyword analysis revealed that the most potential research areas in the field of emotion regulation are functional magnetic resonance imaging, amygdala, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, alexithymia, emotion dysregulation, depression, anxiety, functional connectivity, neuroimaging, mindfulness, self-regulation, resilience and coping. The thematic evolution reflects that the research on emotion regulation has recently focused on issues including Covid-19, non-suicidal self-injury, psychological distress, intimate partner violence and mental health.

The results of this study highlighted the current knowledge gaps in emotion regulation research and suggested areas for further investigation. The present study could be useful for researchers, academicians, planners, publishers and universities engaged in emotion regulation research.

The majority of emerging adults in the United States spend time in cohabiting unions. Prior research has suggested that higher levels of sexual non-exclusivity may exist among those in cohabiting relationships compared to marital unions. Although these basic patterns have been explored in prior work, research examining the potential reasons why levels of sexual non-exclusivity differ by union status has been limited. Drawing on a relational perspective and using the fifth wave of data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS), the present study found that higher levels of sexual non-exclusivity in cohabiting relationships were explained by intimate relationship characteristics and sexual histories rather than sociodemographic factors, partner heterogamy, or partner- and couple-level drug use. These findings highlighted that understanding the higher rates of sexually non-exclusive experiences in cohabiting relationships, compared to marital relationships, requires attention to specific dynamics of the intimate partnership and prior relational experiences of both partners. The study concluded that cohabitation has a unique place in emerging adults’ relationship landscape and may set the groundwork for future relationship functioning.

Domestic violence is an intimate relationship that causes physical, sexual or mental suffering. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has had a ruinous effect globally, particularly in increasing the rate of domestic violence. Thus, this study aims to assess the prevalence of domestic violence against women during the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated factors.

A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted on Bench Sheko Zone residents from May to June 2021. Participants in the study were selected by multistage sampling technique. The collected data were coded, entered into EpiData 3.1 and analyzed by using SPSS version 20. Bi-variable and multiple logistic regression analysis models were fitted. Odds ratio was used at a 95% confidence level, and P-value < 0.05 was used to declare statistical significance.

A total of 1,512 eligible women participated, with a 98.3% response rate. The proportion of domestic violence against women was 42.5%. The prevalence of psychological violence was 30.4%, followed by physical violence at 20.2% and sexual violence accounted for 9.6%. Variables, such as rural residency, women with no formal education, partner who had no formal education, women with monthly income of less than 25,00 Ethiopian birr and partner who was current substance user, were found to be associated with domestic violence against women.

Domestic violence against women is still an important public health problem in Ethiopia. Special attention should be paid to identified predictors to reduce domestic violence beyond designing prevention and control strategies along with coronavirus pandemic intervention plan.

The findings of this study show domestic violence against women is still an important public health problem in Ethiopia. Special attention should be paid to identified predictors to reduce domestic violence beyond designing prevention and control strategies, along with the coronavirus pandemic intervention plan.

Non-fatal strangulation (NFS) is a dangerous form of domestic violence. We need to understand and address the challenges of prosecuting offences of NFS to help ensure the safety of women and children. This policy brief draws on an examination of prosecution case files involving NFS. It identifies the key challenges and makes recommendations for responding to them.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of how collaboration agreements function and their benefits for the environments where they are implemented. The goal of these initiatives is to bring together in partnerships the actors concerned by domestic violence and coordinate their actions to ensure the safety of persons at risk of intrafamilial homicides through an effective collaboration structure.

The synthesis data originates from four research projects research work with the partners of four studied agreements: A-GIR (Arrimage-Groupe d’Intervention Rapide [Rapid Intervention Unit]) in Laval, Alerte-Lanaudière [Lanaudière Alert] in the Lanaudière region, P.H.A.R.E. (Prévention des homicides intrafamiliaux par des Actions Rapides et Engagées [Domestic Homicide Prevention through Rapid and Committed Action]) in South Western Montérégie and the Rabaska Protocol in Abitibi-Témiscamingue.

Overall, the interveners agree on the positive impacts resulting from the relationships between the partners, the development of a common expertise and the collective responsibility acting to prevent intrafamilial homicides, while highlighting the challenges met and the essential conditions for the success of these collaboration initiatives.

Findings are drawn from participants in a particular locale – i.e. French–Canada, and may not entirely apply to other regions and cultures. Additional research should be conducted with similar methodology in other regions of Canada and elsewhere.

The findings should help in the further development of best practices for IPH prevention and therefore protect potential victims from lethal assaults of domestic violence.

Few studies have been conducted on how stakeholders involved in IPH prevention actually work together in collaborative efforts, and none, as far as we know, specifically on drawing up formal agreements.