Title: Intimate partner violence linked to gambling: Cohort and period effects on the past
experiences of older women
Version: 0 Date: 06 Feb 2023
Reviewer:  Heidi Stöckl
Reviewer's report:
Intimate partner violence linked to gambling: Cohort and period effects on the past experiences
of older women
Comments:
Dear authors, thank you for the opportunity to review this great article. It has quite a strong
substantial contribution to make to the literature but needs some major revisions before it can
be considered for publication. I was a bit disappointed when I started reading the introduction
as the title of the article clearly is about IPV and gambling, but then the introduction seems
more focused on older women and IPV in general. The results section shows that there is this
intersectionality of IPV, age and gambling present in your analysis, but you need to get the story
line right about this and really work out in the discussion what this means. In most of it, you
are not focused on gambling.
As I have really enjoyed the results, I am sure you can turn the manuscript around to fit the
introduction and discussion much more to what is a really strong contribution to the field.
Abstract:
• There is a big jump to gambling related IPV in the abstract. There needs to be more information
about older women and gambling before gambling related IPV can be defined and mentioned.
• Not sure what the cohort effects and period effects here relate to in terms of the overall question.
Please explain.
• Methods should mention where the women were sampled from and how they were chosen.
• How can you speak of generational differences when you only used the sample of 50 years plus.
• The results should speak a bit more about the gambling related IPV as they are currently focused
on effects that all older women might report.
Introduction:
- The first paragraph of the introduction needs rewriting to be more concise. It is worded very
generally right now, it is not clear about which continent you are speaking about, Europe, Asia,
Africa or Australia. Is this the case everywhere?
- Can you define intimate partner violence
- Age 50 plus and the year is a duplication of information.
- You are bringing up gambling related IPV in the end of this paragraph but not anymore before
the end of the introduction. Far more information is needed about the gambling related IPV part
as this is a crucial part of the paper according to the title. You need to write a substantive section
on it in the introduction why this particular angle is important and what is known about it
- There has been a qualitative systematic review by Sarah Meyer on violence against older
women published in Plos One in the last 2 years that might add important information (I am not
an author of this paper, but recommend reading it).
Methods:
- More information (a few lines) are needed on the original study
- How was the study advertised and what were women told in order to be recruited
- The numbers of the sample confuse me. 22 had IPV in context of their partners gambling, nine
by their own and then there are six who focused on his financial abuse. They surely overlap as
they are otherwise over 22. Did the six with financial abuse also experience gambling related
IPV as they otherwise should not be considered.
- Please outline any ethical and safety concerns in the study design, especially in relation to
phone interviews.
- Who conducted the phone interviews and how were they trained
- Please provide more information on the sample limitations. How many women were recruited
from which source
- Please explain what a gender-sensitive ecological framework is
- Who is we in the analysis section. Please provide more detail who analysed the transcripts,
whether they were transcribed or not how were codes defined and who was involved in this.
- Please state the theoretical understandings in the field and what previous findings exists on
cohort and period effects- are you referring to the parent study of this?
Results:
- Please start by providing more information on the sample as it seems to be quite varied as it
emerges from the sample inn terms of different heritages. No mentioning is made too how old
the women actually are.
- Did they also report physical abuse without hospitalization
- I struggled with Table 1 as it currently is as it is not obvious to all readers – although you
explained it before what cohort and periodic effects are. Some people only look at the table and
the explanation is somewhere in the background. Also, nothing there is specific to older women
or gambling. It actually comes out far more specific in the text of the results. One way around
this could be to add additional columns, one for what difference the age made and the other
what the gambling component did to this observation. The text is clear that they both have a
stronger effect, e.g. older age on norms and submissiveness, gambling on keeping your face in
front of others.
- The results are otherwise really well written and the often delineate between women*s
experience, the role of age and the role of gambling. This could be much better portrayed in
the table if this is used at all. If no changes are made to the table, I would rather delete it and
stick with the text.
- On the last part of the results, with the role of the health care providers, did gambling ever
come up.
Discussion:
- The first paragraph again only mentions gambling too briefly. The strength of the article
is the intersectionality between IPV, old age and gambling and this should be portrayed and
summarized here
- Now you do not mention gender in respect to the framework
- While gambling is mentioned as the third point, there is no reference made to how it interacts
with old age and IPV among older women.
- The limitation section in no word relates to issues of sampling. This section needs to be
substantially expanded.
Overall: Usage of the word victim: I am concerned about the use of the term victim to refer to the
women experiencing acts of violence because a) many women who experience violence do not
perceive themselves as victims and b) the term carries judgement and potentially stigma and c)
of the consequences this might carry to the outside and the understanding of people themselves.
I recommend reading the following explanations – the two articles on landmines refer to sexual
violence and abuse and I feel they best summarize the reasons for why to not use the term victim:
- https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cisr-journal/vol15/iss2/13/
- https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/153196692.pdf
- https://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:psn&volume=9&issue=1&article=004
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1555415518309449
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801218820202
(No need to cite those)
I come from the field of public health where major studies, e.g. the global estimates on violence
against women published by WHO or the WHO multi-country study on domestic violence do not
refer to women who experience intimate partner violence as victims, while at no point arguing
that this behaviour is not a crime.