Reviewer's report 
 Risk factors for domestic violence: eight national cross-sectional household surveys in southern Africa Title: 
 1  4 October 2006 Version: Date: 
 Pat O'Campo Reviewer: 
Reviewer's report: 
General 
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Major Compulsory Revisions (that the author must respond to before a decision on publication can be reached) 
Risk factors for domestic violence: eight national cross sectional household surveys in southern Africa. 
This is potentially an important article reporting on domestic violence patterns and attitudes in several 
African countries. There are a number of strengths to this study including the contribution of these data to a 
field that has very little documentation about violence in these countries, the use of the same survey across 
all countries, and the large sample size. Yet, there are several issues requiring greater attention. 
The introduction should provide a definition of domestic violence as several, often contradictory, definitions 
exist for this term. While the authors talk about domestic violence they are really measuring physical 
violence, perhaps the language should be changed to be more specific to the outcome under study. 
It is curious that the analyses didn't account for correlation between couples and correlation within 
households. If this reviewer understands the methods correctly, more than one adult was recruited into the study from each household. Thus, the analyses should account for the correlation. If a couple has engaged in violence, are both members included in the prevalence rates? Perhaps rates should be presented by 
household and not individuals. 
In the results, the ideas of collective efficacy just appear out of nowhere. No information on this survey item 
is provided in the methods. This should be clarified. Moreover, the whole idea of collective efficacy and how 
it fits with the paper/analyses being presented should be explained and justified. 
The tables are very busy and in many cases, weighted results are not too different from unweighted. 
Perhaps only one should be presented to reduce clutter in the tables. 
The finding about reporting and talking about domestic violence is not clear. It would seem a tautology that if 
one reports they also talk about domestic violence. How are these independent? 
The authors make claims that are not supported. For example, on page 10, the authors note that males had 
stronger associations than females yet the confidence intervals for the two overlap. Another claim that seems unsupported is that male victimization is not talked about in the literature. Finally, the Zambia difference claimed by the authors should be clarified further. 
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Minor Essential Revisions (such as missing labels on figures, or the wrong use of a term, which the author can be trusted to correct) 
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Discretionary Revisions (which the author can choose to ignore) 
 Unable to decide on acceptance or rejection until the authors have responded to the major What next?: 
compulsory revisions 
 An article whose findings are important to those with closely related research interests Level of interest: 
 Acceptable Quality of written English: 
 No Statistical review: