Sexual Violence Survey (SVS) Steering Group

Department of Justice and Equality, 51 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 1

26^th April 2019 

Agenda

1. Introduction

2. Update from CSO on development work to date

1. Internal governance
2. Timeline
3. Refinement of data needs
4. Costing/budget development

3. Istanbul convention implications

4. Sub-population approach

5. Terms of reference for discussion

a.Publication of minutes/agendas

6. Future dates for 2019

7. AOB

Minutes

Attendees:

• Philip McCormack, Research Officer, Department of Justice and Equality (Chair)
• Dr. Gurchand Singh, Chief Information Officer, Department of Justice and Equality
• Richie McMahon, Assistant Director General, Central Statistics Office
• Brian Ring, Senior Statistician, Central Statistics Office
• Helen McGrath, Statistician, Central Statistics Office

1.       Introduction

The Chair welcomed the CSO to the DJE office. It was noted that there will be a new head of the research unit in DJE appointed in June 2019.

2.       Update from CSO on development work to date

A progress report was issued to DJE prior to the meeting and CSO gave a brief summary of the document. It included an explanation of project governance within the CSO, as well as a draft timeline, an update on budgeting work and the refinement of data needs. The CSO agreed to share a note on the expert meetings held earlier in the month.

• Timeline

CSO explained the five-year agreed timeline. The survey will be built within the framework of the Statistics Act, 1993 and be based on the work of the 2018 Scoping Group on Sexual Violence Data reflecting changes in society since 2002, as well as changes in Data Protection legislation and methodological practices. Given the complexity and sensitivity issues it is envisaged that the entire process of planning, designing, executing and reporting on the survey will take in the region of five years and will involve a number of phases which includes a pilot. The CSO is continuing to review this timeline. Both CSO and DJE agreed that this work is novel - the SAVI report is still one of the few dedicated sexual violence reports based on a large-scale survey in Europe. There is no agreed approach in conducting this type of surveys and hence this will require considerable development work.

• Budgeting

The CSO explained that the mode selection will impact heavily on the cost of the project. The CSO will examine the potential cost for 2020 specifically over the next few weeks and will aim to submit a note on this to DJE for discussion by 16^th May. CSO noted that there is the potential to discuss the note after the stakeholder townhall event on the 22^nd May.

• Data need refinement

The CSO noted that the data list produced from by the Scoping Group needs further refinement to create a workable list of variables – a point acknowledged in the Scoping Group report itself. The length of the survey is a critical factor for the mode choice, which has knock on impacts for survey delivery and budgets. DJE agreed with the approach of a new, very focused data needs group, and suggested there be two groups formed: a data needs group and a policy needs group. CSO agreed and DJE will revert with names and details.

DJE will examine the progress report and come back to CSO with any comment/clarification after the meeting.

3.       Istanbul convention implications

DJE examined the convention and its implications – using a comprehensive report on data requirements - as well as the GREVIO questionnaire.

The convention looks at a broad range of issues as part of the broader term violence against women. Sexual harassment, which is included within the scope of sexual abuse, is included in the scoping group list but it is not expanded in the level of detail to include a full analysis of sexual harassment in the workplace. It was noted that a separate scoping group was to be set up to deal specifically with sexual harassment including sexual harassment in the workplace. DJE will seek an update on this for the group.

DJE are confident that the existence of this survey (with the current data list) will address a lot of the survey-based requirements for the convention. DJE examined the GREVIO questionnaire and highlighted the areas which this survey could answer. DJE will share this with CSO. DJE also noted that the proposal to refine the data will need to be cogniscent of these needs.

4.       Sub-population approach

The CSO noted that a nationally representative survey will include migrant populations, traveller communities, people with intellectual disabilities living in the community, etc, however it is unlikely to include enough of those sub populations to produce disaggregated official statistics at that level.

The MOU does not include the sub population work as part of the nationally representative survey however the CSO will help where it can. Options such as identifying frames for certain sub populations could and the CSO could potentially deliver quantitative surveys to a randomly identified sample within these frames - however this will produce little in the way of statistics that the office could publish due to reliability limits which the office uses.

DJE acknowledged the in-depth nature of the topics and the small populations. They shared experiences from the Garda Attitudes Survey on the difficulties with publishing by nationality/ethnicity. They also shared UK experiences on oversampling in a citizenship survey which led to issues in the results due to clustering.

DJE suggested that they would approach their MB with proposals to consider exploring options, including conducting qualitative work on sub populations after the SVS pilot is conducted when the DJE research area will be fully operational.

5.       Terms of reference for discussion

DJE acknowledged receipt of the draft TOR for the Steering Group and will review and revert with comments to CSO. DJE agreed to work with CSO towards publishing the minutes of the meeting on the SVS section of the CSO website.

6.       Future dates for 2019/2020

CSO will issue a date for the next official Steering Group meeting in June.

7.       AOB

Sample size – DJE enquired as to any further developments on the proposed sample size for the SVS survey. CSO had raised the issue of the sample size being too small to produce official statistics on the range of data list points available due to the potentially small cell sizes. Initial discussions with internal CSO sections have suggested that increasing the scale of the sample could potentially result in a total sample size as large as 30,000 households – with the costs potentially increasing significantly as a result. DJE reiterated that this is a survey on the prevalence of sexual violence and reliable headline figures on prevalence are the main focus. A related matter that was also discussed was on issues pertaining to the collection of data on prevalence of sexual violence experienced over the lifetime of respondents vis-à-vis incidence data of violence experienced over the 12 months previous to interview.

Stakeholder group - The stakeholder group meeting on the 22nd May was noted and a brief description of the agenda was given by CSO.

Sexual Violence campaign - The campaign and it’s launch date (9^th May) were shared.