Factors Associated with Intimate Partner Violence against Men: Case Study of Northern Uganda

Abstract

Introduction: Intimate partner violence (IPV) against men, like other forms of domestic violence, is a complex problem that affects male of all age, although the label of IPV and domestic violence are often used interchangeably to describe spousal abuse and according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2012), IPV is “abuse between two people in a close relationship current and former spouses and dating partners”. In Uganda 40% of the men in relationship suffer violence from their spouse though they don’t report because of culture. Most vulnerable men who suffer violence in Uganda are those who stay in rural areas compared to those who stay in urban areas. Their fore the objectives of this study aimed at finding the association between demographic, behavioral, socio-economic factors and IPV which was included in the UDHS 2016. Methodology: this study used secondary data and considered Northern part of Uganda as the study population specifically those men who suffered violence from their spouse. The data was analyzed using stata 13 and it was obtained from Uganda bureau of statistics. Out of the 1249 men who participated in the survey from Northern Uganda, only 942 men accepted that they experienced violence from their spouse and these where taken as the sample size of the study however some never answered the question which was taken to be the measure of violence against men but still where considered as missing variables in this study. Discussion of findings: the factors which were examined in this study all of them had no association with IPV since the chi-square p-value was greater than 0.05 which made the null hypothesis stated true. The variables where still not a good measure for IPV against men since when performed VIF function stata 13 after regression it was less than 9. Conclusion and recommendation: these results suggest that little progress in reducing levels of domestic violence is likely to be achieved without significant changes in prevailing individual and community attitudes toward domestic violence since the socio-economic factors and demographic factors heard less or no impact on violence against men in Uganda. Therefore the researcher should encourage abused men to come forward and pressurize government so they cannot turn a ‘blind eye’ any longer and even effective legislations to curb domestic violence against men must be put in place and enforced.