DSGBV Working Group - Meeting 1

Minutes of Meeting

1. Introduction 

• Donal Kelly (Chair) (CSO) opened the meeting, welcomed the members and thanked them for giving their time to participate in the advisory group.
• Donal Kelly (Chair) (CSO) outlined the Terms of Reference and noted the primary focus of the group is:
• To examine if key planned outputs from the EUGBV survey will also meet national requirements on DV and coercive control.
• To consider possible areas of contrast or challenges using the EUGBV to provide data on national requirements.
• Consider order of priority for national data needs.
• The chair also outlined the timeline for this piece of work, which will conclude in April 2026, with final decisions on questionnaire content and design resting with the CSO.
• Jessica Coyne (CSO) presented on the following:
• Background on the purpose of the group and what it hopes to achieve.
• The CSOs role in the Government’s ‘Zero-tolerance strategy’ and the progress made to date.
• Rationale for EUGBV rather than a bespoke national survey.
• The process of developing the survey and translating data needs into an instrument.
• Work carried out by the advisory group around coercive control.
• An overview of the content of the EUGBV.

2. Concepts and definitions

• The group discussed the importance of generating high quality and understandable statistics from this survey that would help to inform policy with the ultimate goal of reducing the prevalence of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence in Ireland.
• The group discussed the legal definition of domestic violence and acknowledged the difficulty in capturing the breadth of complex experiences within the confines of a single questionnaire.
• The group discussed the challenges of defining and measuring domestic violence and coercive control within a questionnaire, and highlighted the following as areas requiring attention –

• The way questions are asked is important as not everyone will recognise themselves as a victim.
• The pros and cons of asking specific behavioural questions as opposed to using more general terms such as ‘coercive control’ were discussed.
• Measuring psychological and functional impacts was identified as a critical need, along with physical impacts.
• The pattern (frequency and duration) and impact of behaviours are important to capture but they do not necessarily overlap in the same ways in all cases, and may be difficult for respondents to answer. The group discussed the measurement of lifetime patterns of abuse, and how cycles of abuse and experiences with more than one partner could be reflected in the data.

3. Methodology

• Some concerns around the process of completing the survey were raised by the group, and in particular the risks the survey might present for respondents and concerns respondents might have about access to their data subsequently. Jessica Coyne (CSO) gave reassurance that the CSO will lean heavily on the experience gained with the SVS to inform the design of the data collection process. Jessica also confirmed that all data provided to the CSO will be pseudo anonymised in line with all other data collection processed in the CSO and will not be shared with any other department. Ensuring participants understand these protections will be a key aspect of the survey design.
• The CSO will also keep stakeholders informed throughout the survey design process, including through focus group testing of the questionnaire, and will establish a liaison group that will meet twice a year.
• The level of detail available through the EUGBV survey was discussed. The group noted that the survey does not specifically capture situations involving more than one perpetrator or more than one type of violence. Jessica Coyne (CSO) explained that this was an intentional change by Eurostat from Wave 1 of the EUGBV, aimed at reducing response burden. The EUGBV will ask whether the respondent was the victim of ‘One person’ or ‘More than one person’ but detailed information concerning the behaviour of each perpetrator will not be collected.

4. Data Needs

• The group highlighted the following specific national data needs that might be considered for inclusion on the EUGBV.
  • Number of relationships in which abuse was encountered.
  • Identify if abuse follows young victims through their adulthood.
  • Non-partner experience connected to a partner/previous partner.
  • Measuring impact including psychological and functional impacts.
  • Location DSGBV was encountered (home, work, public space etc.)
  • Use of support services and reasons why support was initially sought.
  • The use tech-facilitated abuse (e.g. pornography) in relation to DSGBV.
• CSO agreed to reflect on the feedback from the meeting and consider how the topics discussed might be reflected in the questionnaire design.
• The group was asked to consider the following items prior to the next meeting:
  • Identify any additional national requirements and areas or priority.
  • Confirm whether questionnaire covers four pillars and DV.
  • Consider do frequency questions capture enough detail?
  • Do the questions capture the psychological impacts in sufficient depth?
• Donal Kelly (Chair) (CSO) also encouraged the group members to get in touch with any further observations.
• The following meetings were agreed to be held virtually on Thursday 19 March & Thursday 02 April from 10.00am to 1.00pm.

5. Suggested agenda items for next meeting (Thursday 19 March):

1. Considering the EUGBV was designed for women does the questionnaire address the experiences of men sufficiently?
2. Impact and severity intertwined – what extra lengths are required?

6. Summary / Actions