U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 

Access OJJDP publications online at ojjdp.gov.

Learn more about the Attorney General’s Defending Childhood 

Initiative at justice.gov/ag/defendingchildhood.

Find out more about OJJDP’s Safe Start Initiative at 

safestartcenter.org.

Children’s Exposure to Violence

N A T I O N A L S U R V E Y O F

Children’s Exposure to Violence

Office of Justice Programs Innovation • Partnerships • Safer Neighborhoods www.ojp.usdoj.gov

Jeff Slowikowski, Acting Administrator

A Message From OJJDP

Children are exposed to violence every 

day in their homes, schools, and communities. Such exposure can cause 

them significant physical, mental, and 

emotional harm with long-term effects 

that can last well into adulthood.

The Attorney General launched Defending Childhood in September 2010 to 

unify the Department of Justice’s efforts 

to address children’s exposure to violence under one initiative. Through 

Defending Childhood, the Department 

is raising public awareness about the 

issue and supporting practitioners, 

researchers, and policymakers as they 

seek solutions to address it. A component of Defending Childhood, OJJDP’s 

Safe Start Initiative continues efforts 

begun in 1999 to enhance practice, 

research, training and technical assistance, and public education about children and violence. 

Under Safe Start, OJJDP conducted the 

National Survey of Children’s Exposure 

to Violence, the most comprehensive 

effort to date to measure the extent 

and nature of the violence that children 

endure and its consequences on their 

lives. This is the first study to ask children and caregivers about exposure to 

a range of violence, crime, and abuse in 

children’s lives.

As amply evidenced in this bulletin 

series, children’s exposure to violence 

is pervasive and affects all ages. The 

research findings reported here and 

in the other bulletins in this series are 

critical to informing our efforts to protect 

children from its damaging effects.

Children’s Exposure to 

Intimate Partner Violence 

and Other Family Violence

Sherry Hamby, David Finkelhor, Heather Turner, 

and Richard Ormrod

This bulletin discusses the data on exposure to family violence in the National 

Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence 

(NatSCEV), the most comprehensive 

nationwide survey of the incidence and 

prevalence of children’s exposure to 

violence to date, sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency 

Prevention (OJJDP) and the Centers for 

Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 

(see “History of the National Survey of 

Children’s Exposure to Violence,” p. 2). An 

earlier bulletin (Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, Hamby, and Kracke, 2009) presented 

an overview of children’s exposure to conventional crime, child maltreatment, other 

types of physical and sexual assault, and 

witnessing community violence. For more 

information on the survey methodology, 

see “Methodology,” p. 5.

This bulletin explores in depth the 

NatSCEV survey results regarding exposure to family violence among children in 

the United States, including exposure to 

intimate partner violence (IPV), assaults 

by parents on siblings of children surveyed, and other assaults involving teen 

and adult household members. These 

results confirm that children are exposed 

to unacceptable rates of violence in the 

home. More than 1 in 9 (11 percent) were 

exposed to some form of family violence 

in the past year, including 1 in 15 (6.6 percent) exposed to IPV between parents (or 

between a parent and that parent’s partner). One in four children (26 percent) 

were exposed to at least one form of family violence during their lifetimes. Most 

youth exposed to family violence, including 90 percent of those exposed to IPV, 

saw the violence, as opposed to hearing it 

or other indirect forms of exposure. Males 

were more likely to perpetrate incidents 

that were witnessed than females, with 68 

percent of youth witnessing only violence 

by males. Father figures were the most 

common perpetrators of family violence, 

although assaults by mothers and other 

caregivers were also common. Children 

often witness family violence, and their 

needs should be assessed when incidents 

occur. These are the most comprehensive 

and detailed data ever collected at the 

national level on this topic. 

October 2011
2

Most recently, Zinzow and colleagues 

(2009) obtained a lifetime estimate of 

9 percent in the National Survey of 

Adolescents–Replication (NSA–R), but 

their sample included only adolescents 

and included only violence between parents. Further, they assessed only severe 

forms of physical violence, so in many 

ways their estimate is less comparable 

to most national data on IPV, which typically include a wide range of acts. Both the 

DVS and the NSA–R were also limited to 

the most direct forms of exposure (seen 

and seen or heard, respectively), and did 

not assess the relative frequency of different forms of exposure. Other estimates 

on exposure to family violence come from 

high-risk convenience samples, such as 

Background

Exposure to IPV is distressing to children 

and is associated with a host of mental 

health symptoms both in childhood and 

in later life. The best documented mental 

health effects include symptoms of posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety 

(Kitzmann et al., 2003; Lang and Stover, 

2008; Wolfe et al., 2003). Exposure to serious IPV as a child is also associated with 

offending as an adult. For example, one 

study found that, among a sample of IPV 

offenders, those who had as a child seen 

a parent use a weapon were more likely to 

commit an offense involving a weapon as 

an adult (Murrell et al., 2005). Despite the 

well-documented adverse consequences 

of IPV exposure and a growing discussion 

of the appropriate policy responses to IPV 

exposure (Jaffe, Crooks, and Wolfe, 2003; 

Nixon et al., 2007), surprisingly little information is available about how often such 

exposure occurs in the general population. 

Such information is important for determining the extent of the problem, assessing the need for services, and establishing 

a baseline for evaluating progress. 

Previous Efforts To Estimate 

Children’s Exposure to 

Family Violence

More than 20 years ago, in the second National Family Violence Survey (conducted 

in 1985), Straus and Gelles asked adults 

whether they had witnessed IPV during 

their childhood; they obtained a rate of 

13 percent for total childhood exposure 

(Straus, 1992). McDonald and colleagues 

(2006) estimated IPV exposure at 15.5 million U.S. youth by calculating the number 

of children in two-parent homes where IPV 

had occurred. This measure was indirect, 

however, as some children may not have 

been aware of these incidents, especially 

the types of IPV most commonly reported 

in national surveys (i.e., one or two incidents of pushes and slaps) (Straus and 

Gelles, 1990; Tjaden and Thoennes, 1998). 

The Developmental Victimization Survey 

(DVS)1

 included a single item on witnessing IPV (Finkelhor et al., 2005), which produced a 1-year incidence rate of 3 percent. 

Although this is probably the best existing estimate of 1-year incidence, it is well 

established that single items in surveys 

often underrepresent the true extent of 

violence (Bolen and Scannapieco, 1999). 

This percentage also counted only events 

that children saw, excluding other forms 

of exposure such as hearing or seeing 

evidence of the attack afterwards. 

women residing in domestic violence 

shelters. Not surprisingly, exposure percentages are often high in these settings, 

frequently exceeding 50 percent (Hutchison and Hirschel, 2001), but they do not 

provide a picture of the national extent 

of the problem. Many of these studies 

collect data on only one parental relationship (often the mother or other primary 

caregiver and her current partner), but in 

today’s world, children may have multiple 

parents, stepparents, and other caregivers and are at risk for being exposed to 

violence between many family members. 

NatSCEV is one of the first studies to assess exposure for all key relationships in a 

child’s life. 

History of the National Survey of Children’s 

Exposure to Violence 

Under the leadership of then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder in June 1999, the 

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) created the Safe Start 

Initiative to prevent and reduce the impact of children’s exposure to violence. As a part of 

this initiative and with a growing need to document the full extent of children’s exposure 

to violence, OJJDP launched the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence 

(NatSCEV) with the support of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

NatSCEV is the first national incidence and prevalence study to comprehensively examine the extent and nature of children’s exposure to violence across all ages, settings, 

and timeframes. Conducted between January and May 2008, it measured the past-year 

and lifetime exposure to violence for children age 17 and younger across several major 

categories: conventional crime, child maltreatment, victimization by peers and siblings, 

sexual victimization, witnessing and indirect victimization (including exposure to community violence and family violence), school violence and threats, and Internet victimization. 

This survey marks the first comprehensive attempt to measure children’s exposure to 

violence in the home, school, and community across all age groups from birth to age 17, 

and the first attempt to measure the cumulative exposure to violence over the child’s lifetime. The survey asked children and their adult caregivers about not only the incidents of 

violence that children suffered and witnessed themselves but also other related crime and 

threat exposures, such as theft or burglary from a child’s household, being in a school 

that was the target of a credible bomb threat, and being in a war zone or an area where 

ethnic violence occurred. 

The study was developed under the direction of OJJDP and was designed and conducted 

by the Crimes Against Children Research Center of the University of New Hampshire. 

It provides comprehensive data on the full extent of violence in the daily lives of children. The primary purpose of NatSCEV is to document the incidence and prevalence of 

children’s exposure to a broad array of violent experiences across a wide developmental 

spectrum. The research team asked followup questions about specific events, including 

where the exposure to violence occurred, whether injury resulted, how often the child 

was exposed to a specific type of violence, and the child’s relationship to the perpetrator 

and (when the child witnessed violence) the victim. In addition, the survey documents 

differences in exposure to violence across gender, race, socioeconomic status, family 

structure, region, urban/rural residence, and developmental stage of the child; specifies how different forms of violent victimization “cluster” or co-occur; identifies individual, 

family, and community-level predictors of exposure to violence among children; examines 

associations between levels/types of exposure to violence and children’s mental and 

emotional health; and assesses the extent to which children disclose incidents of violence 

to various individuals and the nature and source of any assistance or treatment provided.
3

in family violence and for characterizing 

children’s experience of gender-related aggression. Studies that assess the gender of 

the perpetrator of witnessed IPV find that 

males perpetrate most family violence, but 

females also can be aggressors. In the DVS, 

males perpetrated 86 percent of the IPV 

incidents that were witnessed and 67 percent of the witnessed incidents of physical abuse of a sibling (Hamby, Ormrod, 

and Finkelhor, 2005). Straus found that 

one-half (50 percent) of youth exposed to 

family violence reported that only their 

fathers were violent, 31 percent reported 

that both parents were perpetrators, 

and 19 percent reported that only their 

mothers were perpetrators (Straus, 1992). 

NatSCEV provides an opportunity to explore this issue using a larger sample with 

more items and, as a result, generate more 

reliable estimates of gender patterns of 

family violence (see “Screening Questions: 

Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence and 

Other Family Violence,” p. 9). 

Reaction to incident. Finally, the nature 

of children’s involvement in IPV episodes 

has been a topic of interest (Edleson, 

Shin, and Armendariz, 2008). The safety 

plans of many organizations recommend 

that parental victims of family violence 

teach their children how to seek help or 

get to safety during an attack (National 

Domestic Violence Hotline, 1998), but little 

information exists about how frequently 

they do this. One survey of police incidents revealed that 11 percent of calls to 

police were made by youth exposed to 

family violence (Fantuzzo et al., 1997). In 

a clinical sample, more than one-half of 

youth had yelled at their parents during a 

fight or tried to get away from the fighting 

(Edleson, Shin, and Armendariz, 2008). 

The current study includes an assessment 

of three responses: yelling, seeking help, 

and trying to get away. 

Findings From the 

NatSCEV Study 

Regarding Children’s 

Exposure to IPV and 

Other Family Violence

The purpose of this bulletin is to report 

the first comprehensive, nationally representative estimates of youth’s exposure to 

IPV and other violence within the family. 

It presents information regarding types of 

exposure, the gender of the perpetrator, 

the relationship of the child witness to 

the perpetrator, and youth’s reactions to 

the incident. It then discusses the implications of the survey data for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers and 

makes policy recommendations, including 

better screening protocols for exposure 

to family violence, improved interventions 

for those exposed, increased coordination of services for adult and child victims 

of family violence, and more prevention 

and education programs to reduce family 

violence. 

Percentages of Exposure 

to IPV and Other Family 

Violence

Table 1 shows the percentages of pastyear and lifetime exposure to various 

forms of family violence for NatSCEV 

survey participants across both genders and four age groups: ages 0–5, 6–9, 

10–13, and 14–17. The researchers looked 

at exposure to psychological violence 

between parents (threats and displaced 

aggression), physical violence between 

parents (including hitting or slapping or 

more serious violence, such as one parent 

kicking, choking, or beating up the other), 

and violence involving other family members (a parent hitting another child in the 

family or a grownup or teen in the family 

assaulting another family member). The 

researchers then aggregated the data to 

determine total past-year and lifetime percentages for exposure to psychological/

emotional IPV between parents, physical 

IPV between parents, and any exposure to 

family violence. 

Past-year exposure percentages. Approximately 1 in 15 youth, or 6.6 percent, had 

been exposed to some form of physical 

assault between their parents in the past 

year. A roughly equivalent percentage, 5.7 

percent, was exposed to psychological/

emotional IPV (verbal threats, punching 

walls, and throwing, breaking, or destroying household items) in the past year. If 

exposure to other forms of family violence 

is included, such as parental assaults on 

other children or assaults between teen or 

adult relatives in the household, then one 

in nine youth (11.1 percent) were exposed 

to physical or psychological violence in 

the family during the previous year. Not 

surprisingly, the most severe violence 

(one parent kicking, choking, or beating 

up the other) had the lowest exposure percentage (1.3 percent), while displaced aggression, including seeing a parent break 

something, punch a wall, or throw things, 

was reported most often (4.9 percent). 

Important Features of Family 

Violence Incidents

In addition to annual incidence and lifetime prevalence estimates, NatSCEV also 

provides the first nationally representative 

data on certain characteristics of IPV exposure that have been of interest to those 

concerned about the problem.

Type of exposure. Many authors have 

pointed out that children can be exposed 

to IPV in multiple ways. Although as many 

as 10 different types of exposure have 

been identified (Holden, 2003), some of the 

most commonly mentioned include seeing 

and hearing violent acts, seeing injuries 

resulting from the violence, and being 

told about the violence. Usually these are 

arranged hierarchically. The most direct 

forms of exposure are seeing or direct eyewitnessing, which may also include lower 

levels of exposure such as hearing. Seeing 

the violence implies the child’s presence, 

which may also put the child in danger, 

and is least subject to errors in interpretation. A child could also hear violence but 

not see it, for example, if the child is in 

another room in the house or apartment. 

This means the child was nearby during 

the assault, and so potentially in danger, 

but hearing is less likely to be accurate 

than seeing. For example, youth could mistakenly attribute violence heard on television to their parents, or, conversely, they 

might not hear an assault even though 

they are in the house or apartment where 

the assault occurs. 

Youth can also become aware of violence 

after it occurs, for example, by seeing the 

victim’s injuries afterwards. This type of 

exposure will usually be fairly contemporaneous with the assault because most 

injuries eventually heal. Finally, youth 

could be told about the assault after it occurs, even years after the incident. Several 

authors have suggested that these types 

of exposure other than direct eyewitness 

exposure make up a significant proportion 

of children’s total exposure to family violence (Fantuzzo and Mohr, 1999; Holden, 

2003); however, no nationally representative data on type of exposure have previously been collected. 

Gender of perpetrator. There has been 

keen interest in gender patterns of IPV 

perpetration (Hamby, 2009), particularly 

whether women’s participation in IPV 

deserves clinical and policy attention. 

Data from witnessed events are important both for examining gender patterns 
4

Table 1. Nationally Representative Percentages of Exposure to Family Violence and Abuse: Past-Year and Lifetime 

Percentages for Total Sample and by Youth Gender and Age

Gender of Youth Age of Youth

Total Male Female 0–5 6–9 10–13 14–17

Item 4,549 2,331 2,219 1,458 1,041 1,037 1,014

Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence (interparental)

1. Verbal threat

Past-Year 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.5 2.0 1.1 2.2

Lifetime 6.4 6.4 6.4 5.4 7.6 2.7 10.5***

2. Displaced aggression (broke something, punched wall, or threw things)

Past-Year 4.9 4.8 5.0 6.7 3.8 2.3 6.2***

Lifetime 15.2 14.2 16.1 11.5 13.7 11.5 25.5***

3. Eyewitness to assault of parent

Past-Year 2.6 2.4 2.9 3.2 1.6 2.3 3.2

Lifetime 11.7 11.2 12.3 7.1 10.0 11.4 20.6***

4. Pushed

Past-Year 3.9 3.7 4.0 5.1 2.9 3.4 3.7*

Lifetime 13.7 13.2 14.2 10.5 12.9 11.0 22.0***

5. Hit or slapped

Past-Year 2.4 2.1 2.6 3.6 1.4 1.9 2.1**

Lifetime 10.1 9.9 10.4 8.2 10.5 8.0 14.7***

6. Severe physical (kicked, choked, or beat up)

Past-Year 1.3 1.2 1.4 1.6 0.8 1.4 1.2

Lifetime 5.3 5.2 5.5 4.6 5.7 4.0 7.3**

Exposure to Other Family Violence

7. Parental assault of sibling 

Past-Year 1.8 1.7 1.9 1.6 0.9 2.1 2.9**

Lifetime 4.6 4.9 4.3 2.5 2.4 4.4 10.3***

8. Other family violence (Grownup or teen pushed, hit, or beat up another relative)

Past-Year 3.4 3.1 3.7 3.0 2.3 2.6 5.9***

Lifetime 7.8 7.4 8.3 4.5 6.9 5.7 15.8***

Aggregate Percentages

Any exposure to psychological/emotional IPV (1 and 2 above)

Past-Year 5.7 5.5 6.5 6.5 5.2 3.9 7.7**

Lifetime 16.0 14.7 17.4† 11.8 15.6 11.8 25.4***

Any exposure to physical IPV (3, 4, 5, and 6 above)

Past-Year 6.6 6.3 7.6 6.6 5.6 7.9 7.8

Lifetime 17.9 16.9 19.0† 11.9 15.5 17.9 27.7***

Any exposure to any family violence (1 through 8 above)

Past-Year 11.1 10.5 11.7 10.2 9.0 11.4 13.8**

Lifetime 25.6 24.8 26.4 17.2 22.8 24.0 40.3***

Note: Weighted n; detail may not add to total due to rounding. Age differences are significant for *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. Gender differences are 

significant for †p < .05. 

IPV = Intimate partner violence.
5

Methodology

The National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) was conducted between January and May 2008. Researchers conducted interviews about the experiences of a nationally representative sample of 4,549 children and adolescents age 17 and younger. They 

interviewed by telephone youth ages 10 to 17 and adult caregivers of children age 9 and younger. Evidence shows that because telephone 

interviews afford greater anonymity and privacy than in-person interviews, they can encourage those interviewed to be more forthcoming 

about such sensitive matters as being exposed to violence or being victims of crime (Acierno et al., 2003; Shannon et al., 2007). The 

interview and analysis sample (n = 4,549) consisted of two groups: a nationally representative sample of telephone numbers within the 

contiguous United States (n = 3,053) and an oversample of telephone exchanges with 70 percent or greater African American, Hispanic, 

or low-income households to ensure a proportion of minority and low-income households large enough for subgroup analysis. Both groups 

were sampled through random-digit dialing. The cooperation rate for the first group was 71 percent and the response rate was 54 percent. 

The oversample had somewhat lower cooperation (63 percent) and response rates (43 percent). A nonresponse analysis conducted on

households that could not be contacted or that declined to participate indicated that the risk of victimization for those households did not 

differ systematically from the risk for households that took part in the survey. An adult, usually a parent, provided demographic information 

for each participating household, including race/ethnicity (one of four categories: white, non-Hispanic; black, non-Hispanic; other race, nonHispanic; and Hispanic, any race) and household income. The child in the household with the most recent birthday was then selected to 

be surveyed. Interviewers spoke directly with children age 10 and older; for children age 9 and younger, the parent or other adult caregiver 

“most familiar with the child’s daily routine and experience” was interviewed. Comparison of a number of indicators, including reports of 

child maltreatment or neglect and violence by family members, found no evidence that caregivers who answered for younger children failed 

to report neglect or violence that was occurring in the family. Comparison of proxy and self-reports using this instrument also found little evidence of reporter bias (Finkelhor et al., 2005; Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, and Hamby, 2009). Past studies have similarly found that caregivers are at least as likely as youth to disclose incidents of family violence (Grych, 1998; Jouriles and Norwood, 1995). Interviews averaged 

about 45 minutes in length and were conducted in both English and Spanish. Approximately 279 caregiver interviews were conducted in 

Spanish; almost all interviews with children and adolescents age 10 and older were in English.

Survey Assessment of Exposure to Family Violence

To determine rates of exposure to family violence, eight types of victimization were assessed: seeing, hearing, or otherwise learning of a 

parent being assaulted by a spouse, domestic partner, or boyfriend or girlfriend; seeing, hearing, or otherwise learning of a threat by one 

parent to assault the other; seeing, hearing, or otherwise learning of a threat by one parent to damage the other parent’s property; seeing, 

hearing, or otherwise learning of one parent pushing the other; seeing, hearing, or otherwise learning of one parent hitting or slapping the 

other; seeing, hearing, or otherwise learning of one parent kicking, choking, or beating up the other; seeing a brother or sister assaulted 

by a parent; and witnessing an assault by another adult household member against a child or adult in the household. The researchers collected data on past-year and lifetime exposure to each of these types of family violence and categorized them by gender and age group. 

They then aggregated that data to create total scores for any exposure to emotional/psychological intimate partner violence (IPV), physical 

IPV, and any exposure to family violence. 

In addition, the researchers asked followup questions relating to how the survey participants were exposed to family violence (whether they 

saw the incident, heard the incident, saw injuries resulting from the incident, or heard about the incident after it occurred); who perpetrated 

the violence (including the gender of the perpetrator and the perpetrator’s relationship to the child surveyed); and the child’s reaction to the 

violent incident (including yelling at the perpetrator to stop, trying to get help, and hiding or leaving the scene). For more detailed information on individual questions, see “Screening Questions: Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence and Other Family Violence,” p. 9.

Limitations

The survey methodology has several limitations that may cause it to understate children’s actual exposure to violence. First, because the 

survey required the cooperation of the family, it ran the risk of missing those children who were most vulnerable to being exposed either to 

violence in general or to specific types of violence. Second, parents or caregivers who answer for younger children may not know about all 

of a child’s exposure to violence or may underreport or minimize certain types of victimization. Third, the screening and followup questions 

may miss some episodes of victimization and incorrectly classify others. Fourth, children may not recall some exposure to violence, particularly less serious exposure, or may not accurately recall the timing of their exposure (i.e., whether or not the exposure occurred within 

the past year). The researchers note that although this survey, to their knowledge, includes the most questions ever asked about exposure 

to family violence in a nationally representative sample, these rates may not be comparable to rates obtained using longer questionnaires 

such as the Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus et al., 1996). Because of time limitations, the researchers collected incident data on only the 

most recent incident for each form of family violence. Despite these limitations, NatSCEV provides the most detailed and comprehensive 

data available on children’s exposure to violence.
6

Lifetime exposure percentages. Lifetime 

percentages were higher, reflecting the 

longer period of possible exposure. The 

lifetime percentage was 17.9 percent for 

exposure to physical IPV alone. Lifetime 

and past-year percentages for exposure 

to different types of physical IPV can be 

compared in figure 1. 

If, in addition to IPV exposure, parental 

assault of a sibling and violence between 

other teens and adults in the household 

are included, then lifetime exposure to 

physical or psychological violence within 

the family rises to 25.6 percent. As figure 2 

shows, children are exposed to significant 

amounts of family violence other than IPV. 

A focus solely on IPV misses a substantial 

amount of the violence to which children 

are exposed. 

These non-IPV incidents also were not infrequent. Among exposed youth, the mean 

number of lifetime exposures, aggregated 

across all screening questions, was 10.75 

incidents (standard deviation = 21.22), and 

the median was 3 incidents. 

Child age and gender. Age of youth was 

strongly associated with exposure to family violence. It is natural that this would be 

true for lifetime rates, as older age means 

longer exposure. If one looks only at the 

oldest group of children (ages 14–17), who 

have lived through most of their exposure 

period, 40.3 percent reported exposure to 

at least one form of family violence over 

their lifetimes, and 27.7 percent reported 

exposure to physical IPV. 

Notably, however, there were also agerelated patterns for past-year rates. Older 

youth (ages 14–17) had higher exposure 

rates for several forms of violence, particularly exposure to assaults on siblings and 

other (non-IPV) family violence. However, 

there were no significant differences by 

age in past-year exposure to physical IPV. 

Analyses by gender indicated that girls 

were somewhat more likely to report exposure to psychological and physical IPV 

over their lifetimes (see table 1, p. 4). 

Types of Children’s 

Exposure to Family Violence

Severity of exposure to family violence.

These are the first national data to characterize how children are typically exposed 

to violence in the family, and they show 

that most children who were exposed to 

family violence (IPV in particular) were 

eyewitnesses. The study assessed four different types of exposure in a hierarchical 

fashion from most to least direct: eyewitnessing or seeing the violence, hearing but 

not seeing it, seeing injuries afterwards 

but not seeing or hearing the actual assault, and being told about the violence 

without any of the above. The most immediate type of exposure, eyewitnessing, 

was by far the most common, accounting 

for 65 to 86 percent of all exposure. Other 

types of exposure nonetheless add significantly to the total, especially hearing but 

not seeing the violence. 

Within this general pattern, however, 

there was some variation. Psychological 

aggression was more likely to be heard 

and not seen than physical aggression. 

Over their lifetimes, being told about family violence comprises a larger percentage of exposure (9.4 to 16.2 percent) for 

older youth (ages 10–17) than for younger 

children (4 to 7.6 percent for children ages 

1 month to 9 years). Specifically, older 

children were more likely to be exposed 

to the following types of family violence 

by being told about them: exposure to 

verbal threats, displaced aggression, a 

family member being pushed, and a family 

member being hit or slapped. This same 

pattern was observed in past-year data; 

however, because of the smaller number 

of cases, it achieved significance only for 

displaced aggression. Youth’s gender had 

no effect on the type of exposure.

Multiple types of exposure to family 

violence and eyewitnessing of family violence. Some youth may experience multiple types of exposure to family violence. 

For example, a youth could hear one act 

of violence (such as a verbal threat) and 

see another act (such as a slap). Although 

this youth would be coded at the “heard” 

level for verbal threat, he or she is also an 

eyewitness of IPV. To account for this, the 

researchers calculated lifetime percentages for eyewitnessing—the most direct 

exposure among those who reported exposure to a particular type of family violence: 

72.7 percent of those exposed to psychological/emotional IPV were eyewitnesses, 

90.1 percent of those exposed to physical 

IPV were eyewitnesses, and 87.1 percent of 

Figure 1. Exposure to Physical Intimate Partner Violence

% lifetime % past year

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

Any EPVa Parent pushed Saw physical

violence

Parent hit Parent severely

assaultedb

13.7%

3.9%

11.7%

2.6%

10.1%

2.4%

5.3%

1.3%

17.9%

6.6%

Percentage of children and youth surveye

d

EPV = Exposure to physical violence.

a

 Any EPV included any exposure to physical violence between intimate partners, including

seeing, hearing, being told of the violence, or seeing the resulting injuries. 

b Severe assault included one partner kicking, choking, or beating up the other.
7

those exposed to other types of family violence were eyewitnesses. When youth are 

exposed to family violence, they usually 

witness at least some assaults. Nine out of 

ten children who were exposed to physical 

IPV in their lifetimes were eyewitnesses 

(see figure 3).

Identification of Perpetrators 

of Family Violence

Violence by intimate partners. Survey 

respondents were asked to identify the 

perpetrator’s gender and relationship to 

the youth. Lifetime data are presented, as 

the patterns are very similar to past-year 

data and these include all available incidents. The report of gender was relatively 

straightforward. Modern family relationships, however, proved to be somewhat 

complex. Open-ended descriptions of 

perpetrators have been combined into 

four broad categories: “father,” “mother,” 

“other males,” and “other females” (see 

figure 4).2

 “Father” and “mother” include 

biological parents, adoptive parents, 

stepparents, foster parents, and cohabiting partners of any parents. The “other” 

categories include noncohabiting partners, caregiving relatives (e.g., grandparents), and occasional mentions of others 

in caregiving or parental roles, broadly 

construed, such as “godfather” or “foster 

mother’s ex-husband” (to give specific 

examples). It is important to capture 

incidents involving all of these people to 

understand the true extent of children’s 

exposure to family violence. 

Males were identified as perpetrators in 

78 percent of IPV incidents (with a range 

of 72 to 88 percent across different forms 

of IPV). The most severe violence (kicking, 

choking, or beating) had the highest percentage of male perpetrators (88 percent). 

Of specific perpetrator categories, fathers 

were the most commonly reported perpetrators, accounting for 61 to 71 percent 

of incidents involving males. The single 

largest category within “other males” was 

noncohabiting boyfriends of mothers, 

accounting for 45 to 76 percent of other 

males. The single largest category within 

“other females” was caregiving relatives 

such as grandmothers and aunts, accounting for 29 to 51 percent of other female 

perpetrators, although it should be noted 

that these were fairly rare reports—all 

other females together only accounted for 

about 5 percent of incidents. 

All youth

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

Parent assault 

of sibling

Teen or grownup 

assault of relative

4.6%

10.3%

7.8%

15.8%

14- to 17-year-olds

Percent

10%

Eyewitness

90%

Heard, saw, or was 

told about injuries

7%

12%

8% 11%

Perpetrator pattern for original Juvenile 

Victimization Questionnaire item on 

witnessing intimate partner violence

Father

Other females

62%

Boyfriend of mother

Mother

Other males

9%

23%

Males only Females only

Both

69%

Figure 2. Percentages of Youth 

Exposed to Assault by Other 

Household Members

Figure 4. Perpetrators of Family 

Violence in Front of Children

Figure 3. Percentages of 

Various Types of Exposure to 

Physical IPV

Figure 5. Perpetrator Patterns by 

Gender Across All IPV Incidents

Aggregated perpetrator patterns for IPV 

incidents. A youth could be exposed to 

both male and female IPV perpetrators. 

For example, a youth might hear his or 

her father threaten his girlfriend and see 

his or her mother slap her ex-husband. 

This turned out to be infrequent, however. Of all youth exposed to IPV, most 

(68.8 percent) encountered only male IPV 

perpetrators. The next largest group (22.6 

percent) consisted of those who described 

only female perpetrators, and few (8.6 

percent) reported exposures to both male 

and female IPV perpetrators (see figure 

5). In another indicator showing that both 

genders were seldom identified as perpetrators, the open-ended response of “both 

parents” was recorded only nine times, or 

in less than 1 percent of IPV incidents. 

Perpetrators of other family violence. 

Fathers were again the most common 

perpetrators when a child witnessed the 

parental assault of a sibling, but the rate 

for mothers was somewhat higher than for 

IPV exposure. For other family violence 

that did not involve one parent’s violence 

against the other parent or a sibling of the 

study participant, the largest proportion 

of the perpetrators were adolescent brothers, accounting for 56 percent of “other 

males” and 24 percent of the total. Fathers 

comprised a substantial portion of perpetrators (23 percent), mothers comprised
8

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Yelled 

to stop

Called 

for help

49.9%

43.9%

23.6%

Tried to

get away

Percentage of children exposed to family violence

who engaged in this behavior at least once

10 percent, and all other females comprised 24 percent. 

These findings align with most criminological data on IPV (Hamby, 2009; Snyder and 

McCurley, 2008) and are consistent with 

the “moderate asymmetry hypothesis” 

(Hamby, 2009), which indicates that males 

perpetrate most IPV and females perpetrate a substantial minority. It is also possible that youth are not true independent 

observers but are identifying the primary 

aggressor in ways that are influenced by 

the judgments of people calling the police 

or police officers making arrests (Snyder and McCurley, 2008). These findings 

nonetheless indicate how important it is 

to understand exposure to family violence from the child’s perspective. Some 

children have many “parents”—biological 

parents, stepparents, adoptive parents, 

foster parents, and other caregivers—and 

it is clear that they are being exposed to 

violence perpetrated by a wide variety of 

caregivers and family members. 

Children’s Reactions to 

Family Violence

The information from the survey on 

children’s reactions to violence by one 

parent against another indicates that large 

numbers were not simply passive observers, as shown in figure 6. Almost one-half 

of the youth surveyed reported yelling to 

try to stop the violence or trying to get 

away from the violence: 49.9 percent of 

exposed youth had yelled at their parents 

to stop at least once, and 43.9 percent had 

tried to get away at least once (the range 

across individual IPV items was 34.2 to 

65.7 percent for yelling at parents to stop 

and 36 to 47.5 percent for trying to get 

away). Calling for help was less prevalent 

but still fairly common at 23.6 percent or 

almost one in four youth (it ranged from 

16.6 to 26.2 percent across individual 

forms of IPV). 

Very similar reactions were also found to 

parental assaults of a sibling (49.3 percent 

yelled at the parent to stop, 41.6 percent 

tried to get away from the fighting, and 

20.2 percent called for help) and violence 

between other household teens and adults 

(48.9 percent yelled, 30.3 percent tried to 

get away, and 26.1 percent called for help). 

These findings support clinical reports 

that children often yell at the perpetrators, try to get away, and call for help in 

response to family violence (Edleson, Shin, 

and Armendariz, 2008). 

Comparison of 

NatSCEV Findings With 

Previous Estimates 

of Exposure to Family 

Violence

Exposure to family violence was common 

in this nationally representative sample of 

youth, with 1 in 9 (11 percent) reporting 

any exposure in the past year and 1 in 15 

(6.6 percent) reporting exposure to physical violence between their parents (see 

table 1, p. 4). Extended to the entire U.S. 

youth population, this yields an estimate 

of approximately 8.2 million children and 

youth who were exposed to family violence in the past year alone. Lifetime exposures were even higher, already reaching 1 

in 4 youth even in this fairly young sample, 

or 18.8 million children extrapolated to 

the population as a whole. Most of these 

exposures involved direct eyewitnessing 

(90 percent for IPV; 76 percent for other 

family violence). Approximately half of the 

youth yelled at their parents during a violent episode between the parents or tried 

to get away; nearly a quarter had called for 

help at least once (see figure 6). 

The addition of more detailed questions 

in NatSCEV (see “Screening Questions: 

Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence 

and Other Family Violence,” p. 9) resulted 

in estimates that are more than double 

the estimates from the earlier DVS survey 

(Finkelhor et al., 2005). The NatSCEV survey’s 1-year point estimate is somewhat 

lower than that provided by McDonald 

and colleagues (2006), although the total 

lifetime estimates are considerably higher 

than those produced by other national 

surveys (Straus, 1992; Zinzow et al., 2009). 

Methodological factors probably account 

for these differences. McDonald and colleagues’ (2006) analysis assumed that if 

IPV occurred in a household with children, 

the children were necessarily exposed 

to that violence, which would be unlikely 

given the private nature of some violence. 

The NatSCEV survey’s higher lifetime estimates, compared to those of Straus (1992) 

and Zinzow and colleagues (2009), are 

probably due to assessing a wider array of 

violent acts and including more forms of 

possible exposure.

Implications for 

Policymakers, 

Researchers, and 

Practitioners

These comprehensive national estimates 

about children exposed to IPV and other 

family violence have several important 

ramifications. First, they provide a new, 

more scientifically grounded basis on 

which education, advocacy, and public 

policy can be advanced with authority and 

urgency. Second, they provide a baseline 

estimate using a sound and replicable 

methodology to monitor trends as professionals and policymakers attempt to 

reduce the toll of exposure to family violence. Third, they move the field toward 

a more systematic understanding of all 

types of exposure to IPV and other family 

violence.

Based on the epidemiology of exposure to 

family violence reflected in this research, 

several major public policy initiatives 

deserve consideration. These include: 

• Better protocols to screen for children exposed to IPV and other family 

violence that can be used in many settings, including health care, education, 

mental health, family services, and the 

criminal justice system. 

Figure 6. Children’s Immediate 

Responses to Violence Against 

Parents
9

Screening Questions: Exposure to Intimate Partner 

Violence and Other Family Violence

The National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) used an enhanced 

version of the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ) (referred to as the JVQ–R1), 

an inventory that covers five general areas of youth victimization: conventional crime, 

maltreatment, victimization by peers and siblings, sexual victimization, and witnessing 

and indirect victimization (Finkelhor et al., 2005; Hamby, Ormrod, and Finkelhor, 2005). 

The original JVQ had two items on witnessing family violence; NatSCEV asked six more 

questions on the topic. The directions to the additional questions read, “The next set 

of questions are about people who have taken care of you [or ‘your child,’ substituted 

throughout]—that would include your parents, stepparents, and your ‘parents’ boyfriends 

or girlfriends, whether you lived with them or not. It would also include other grownups, 

like grandparents or foster parents if they took care of you on a regular basis. When we 

say ‘parent’ in these next questions, we mean any of these people.”* If respondents reported family perpetrators and victims in response to other more general screeners, these 

episodes were also included in the rates. 

Questions Regarding Types of Exposure

In the six new NatSCEV items regarding exposure to family violence, respondents were 

asked, “How did you know it happened?” The response options were: “Did you see it?”; 

“Did you hear it, but not see it?”; “Did you not see or hear it, but see the person’s bruise 

or injury?”; and “Did you not see or hear anything, but someone told you?” Additional 

incident data were collected only for the first three types of exposure. Respondents were 

directed to describe the most recent episode of family violence that they saw, heard, or 

saw a resulting injury from. 

Questions Regarding Perpetrator Identity

Respondents were asked, “Who did this?” Interviewers coded respondents’ open-ended 

answers into several categories, including father, mother, sibling, other relative who lives 

with the youth, other relative who does not live with the youth, a parent’s boyfriend or 

girlfriend, and other grownup. “Father” and “mother” included biological parents, adoptive 

parents, stepparents, and cohabiting partners of a parent. Responses that the interviewers could not categorize were recorded verbatim and coded later. 

Fathers were recorded as males, mothers as females. If the perpetrator’s gender was not 

clear, respondents were asked, “Was this a man, woman, boy, or girl?” 

Questions Regarding Reactions to Incidents of Family Violence

Three questions based on the Child Exposure to Domestic Violence scale (Edleson, 

Shin, and Armendariz, 2008) were asked: “When this happened, did you yell at them to 

stop?”; “When this happened, did you call someone else for help, like calling someone 

on the phone or going next door?”; and “When this happened, did you try to get away 

from the fighting by hiding or leaving the house?” The last two questions were asked only 

about youth age 2 and older. These questions were asked only of respondents who first 

described these incidents during the family violence portion of the interview (not if the 

episode was disclosed in response to one of the more general screening questions).

* For the exact wording of the questions, see Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, and Hamby, 2009.

• Improved interventions to assist exposed children, particularly those who 

have been exposed to the most severe 

forms of violence or who experience 

chronic exposure to violence. These 

interventions could include safety 

planning that is targeted at children’s 

safety, and evidence-based therapeutic 

programs to help children cope with 

their exposure (Graham-Bermann et al., 

2007).

• Increased efforts to coordinate services 

between adult and child victims and 

witnesses, such as those advocated by 

the Greenbook and Safe Start Initiatives 

(Association for the Study and Development of Community, 2005; Schechter 

and Edleson, 1999).

• Prevention programs to reduce the 

amount of family violence to which 

children are exposed, through 

school-based education, parenting 

education, and public awareness 

campaigns.

These new findings offer some guidance 

on issues that these protocols and programs should address. Perhaps most 

importantly, protocols and programs need 

to recognize that exposure to violence 

occurs in a wide array of family relationships. In today’s society, many children 

have more than two parents, and assessments should be sure to document exposures to noncustodial parents, stepparents, 

boyfriends or girlfriends of parents, and 

other in-home caregivers (such as grandparents). Likewise, NatSCEV provides the 

strongest available data so far to indicate 

that children are witnessing violence 

between other family members, and 

this exposure should also be addressed. 

Evidence showing that nearly all exposed 

children are direct eyewitnesses to at least 

some violence in the home provides new 

urgency to longstanding calls to continue 

working on model protocols and programs. 

Endnotes

1. The DVS, a precursor to NatSCEV, asked 

a nationally representative sample of 2,030 

children ages 10 to 17 and caregivers of 

children ages 2 to 9 about their past-year 

exposure to crime and violence in five 

categories: conventional crime, child maltreatment, peer and sibling victimization, 

sexual assault, and witnessing and indirect 

victimization. The DVS was the first national survey to estimate the incidence of 

witnessing physical abuse (Finkelhor et al., 

2005; Kracke and Hahn, 2008). 

2. Because mothers’ noncohabiting boyfriends constitute such a large proportion 

of perpetrators of IPV that children are 

exposed to (11 percent, versus 8 percent 

for all other males in the “other males” category), they are broken out into a separate 

category in figure 4. 

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11

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Acknowledgments 

This bulletin was written by Sherry Hamby, Ph.D., Research Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Sewanee: The University of the South; David Finkelhor, Ph.D., 

Director, Crimes Against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire; Heather 

Turner, Ph.D., Professor, Crimes Against Children Research Center, University of New 

Hampshire; and Richard Ormrod, Ph.D., Research Professor, Crimes Against Children 

Research Center, University of New Hampshire. OJJDP wishes to acknowledge the contributions to this bulletin of Rebecca T. Leeb, Ph.D., Epidemiologist, Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and 

Prevention (CDC). OJJDP also wishes to acknowledge the support of CDC for the National 

Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence and its partnership in the Safe Start Initiative to 

create safe, stable, and nurturing environments for children and their families.

This bulletin was prepared under cooperative agreement number 2005–JL–FX–0048 

from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice. 

Points of view or opinions expressed in this 

document are those of the authors and do 

not necessarily represent the official position or policies of OJJDP or the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is a component of the Office 

of Justice Programs, which also includes the 

Bureau of Justice Assistance; the Bureau of 

Justice Statistics; the National Institute of Justice; the Office for Victims of Crime; and the 

Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, 

Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking.

Straus, M.A. 1992. Children as witness to 

marital violence: A risk factor for lifelong 

problems among a nationally representative sample of American men and women. 

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Twenty-Third Ross Roundtable on Critical 

Approaches to Common Pediatric Problems, 

edited by D.F. Schwarz. Columbus, OH: 

Ross Laboratories, pp. 98–104.

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Families. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction 

Publishers.

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Violence Against Women: Findings from the 

National Violence Against Women Survey.

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Institute of Justice. 

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of children’s exposure to domestic violence: A meta-analysis and critique. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review

6(3):171–187.

Zinzow, H.M., Ruggiero, K.J., Resnick, H., 

Hanson, R., Smith, D., Saunders, B., and 

Kilpatrick, D. 2009. Prevalence and mental 

health correlates of witnessed parental 

and community violence in a national 

sample of adolescents. Journal of Child 

Psychology and Psychiatry 50(4):441–450.

For Further Information

To learn more about the Safe Start Initiative, visit www.safestartcenter.org.

For more information about the National 

Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence, 

visit the Crimes Against Children Research 

Center Web site at www.unh.edu/ccrc. 

Detailed supplementary tables of the rates 

reported here can be obtained by contacting Sherry Hamby at sherry.hamby@

sewanee.edu.
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