National Statistical

The way domestic abuse manifests is constantly changing. Because of this and legislative changes, the ONS has undertaken a user engagement, research and testing programme to ensure our statistics continue to provide the most accurate information and meet the needs of users. Meghan Elkin explains how a new set of survey questions for the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) has been developed to give a better understanding of domestic abuse.

Questions about domestic abuse were first included on the CSEW in 2004. They have largely remained the same since they were introduced, allowing for a long comparable time series. However, as time has gone on, there have been growing issues with the questions and resulting data. For example, aligning with new laws on coercive and controlling behaviour and the definition of domestic abuse introduced in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. They also didn’t measure the number of incidents or frequency of the abuse.

We have therefore undertaken a programme of work to improve our domestic abuse questions to better understand what’s going on and, ultimately, to improve outcomes and support for victims.

Given the importance and sensitivities of measuring domestic abuse, we have ensured a rigorous approach to research and testing. We have included input from victims and survivors in the question development alongside views from independent experts in the field. We are grateful to everyone who has contributed to this research.

The new questions ask about types of abuse not previously covered by the crime survey, such as health and marital status-related abuse.

Health abuse includes anything from depriving a person of daily essentials, such as food and sleep, to forcing someone to terminate pregnancy or denying someone medical assistance. Marital status-related abuse includes forced marriage and the prevention of marrying someone of your choice.

And for types of abuse that were covered, we are now asking about a wider range of behaviours that victims may be able to identify with. For example, more detail on economic abuse such as someone deliberately getting you into debt or preventing you from getting a job.

Through our evaluation, we have concluded that the new questions provide a better measure of domestic abuse. Therefore, we have decided to change to using the new survey questions on the crime survey to measure domestic abuse from April 2025. The full evidence behind our decision is provided in our Evaluating a new measure of domestic abuse article, with a summary article here.

This means that, going forwards, our official statistics on domestic abuse will be derived from the new domestic abuse questions. In addition, the estimates published in our Redevelopment of domestic abuse statistics: research update December 2024 article should now be treated as official statistics.

New questions mean better data

The new questions provide huge opportunities to explore and present the lived experiences of victims of domestic abuse to aid government, law enforcement, victim services, academia and the general public in better supporting victims and ultimately helping prevent domestic abuse.

From the new questions, we estimate that, for the survey year ending March 2024, 8.0% of people aged 16 years and over experienced domestic abuse in the last year (equivalent to 3.9 million people). When breaking the figures down by sex, we estimate 9.5% of women (2.3 million) and 6.5% of men (1.5 million) have experienced domestic abuse in the last year.

We estimate 1 in 4 (26.1%) people aged 16 years and over have experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16 years (equivalent to 12.6 million people). Split by sex, 30.3% of women and 21.7% of men have experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16 years (equivalent to 7.4 million and 5.1 million, respectively).

It is not possible to compare the estimates derived from both sets of questions. It is also not possible to adjust the new estimates to enable direct comparisons to be made, nor is it possible to separate coercive and control behaviours into individual estimates.

However, for context to understand the impact of this improvement, the previous CSEW questions estimated that 1 in 5 people aged 16 years and over (20.5%) had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16 years, for the survey year ending March 2024. The estimates derived from the previous questions remain the official estimates for data from the year ending March 2005 to the year ending March 2023.

Abuse profiles

When the new domestic abuse survey questions were developed, they were designed with the intention that the abusive behaviour and impact questions could be used together to profile different types of victims of domestic abuse, as outlined in our Redevelopment of domestic abuse statistics: research update November 2022 article.

Through taking this approach, we plan to produce abuse profiles. The profiles will show the spectrum of victims based on their experiences since the age of 16 years. This approach should allow us to analyse differences in severity of abuse experienced – for example, between men and women. However, it is still early days in the development of these profiles.

It is important to note that it will not be possible to differentiate between when the abusive behaviours occurred and when the impacts of those behaviours were felt. Behaviours and their impacts could be recent, but they could also date back many years.

Although we are unable to share any results at this stage while we continue to explore methods, we aim to share more information in our annual domestic abuse compendium later in 2025. We remain flexible in our choice of methodology and will communicate further as we progress.

Looking ahead

We plan to publish headline estimates from the new questions alongside our Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025 bulletin in July, and then more detailed estimates in our annual domestic abuse compendium later in 2025. We will work with users to provide the support needed to understand the new estimates.