A multi-state examination of the victims of fatal adolescent intimate partner violence, 2011-2015

Research utility and limitations of textual data in the National Violent Death Reporting System: a scoping review and recommendations

BACKGROUND

Many studies of injury deaths rely on mortality data that contain limited contextual information about decedents. The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) is unique among such data systems in that each observation includes both quantitative variables and qualitative texts (called "narratives") abstracted from original source documents. These narratives provide rich data regarding salient circumstances that can be used to inform prevention efforts. This review provides a comprehensive summary of peer-reviewed research using NVDRS narratives over the past 20 years, including the limitations of these texts and provides recommendations on utilizing and improving narrative quality for researchers and practitioners.

MAIN BODY

Studies that used narratives to examine deaths related to suicide, homicide, undetermined intent, accidental firearm, or legal intervention were identified by a title/abstract screening, followed by a full-text review. The search was conducted on English-language, peer-reviewed literature and government reports published from 2002 to 2022 in PubMed, PsycInfo, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Abstracted elements focused on the methodologies used to analyze the narratives, including approaches to explore potential biases in these texts. Articles were abstracted independently by two reviewers, with disagreements resolved through consensus discussion. During the 20-year period, 111 articles used narratives. Two-thirds studied suicide (n = 48, 43%) and homicides (n = 25, 23%). Most studies analyzed the narratives using manual review (n = 81, 73%) and keyword searches (n = 9, 8%), with only 6 (5%) using machine learning tools. Narratives were mainly used for case finding (n = 49, 44%) and characterization of circumstances around deaths (n = 38, 34%). Common challenges included variability in the narratives and lack of relevant circumstantial details for case characterization.

CONCLUSION

Although the use of narratives has increased over time, these efforts would be enhanced by detailed abstraction of circumstances with greater salience to injury research and prevention. Moreover, researchers and practitioners would benefit from guidance on integrating narratives with quantitative variables and standardized approaches to address variability in the completeness and length of narratives. Such efforts will increase the reliability of findings and set the stage for more widespread applications of data science methods to these texts.

Femicide Fatal Risk Factors: A Last Decade Comparison between Italian Victims of Femicide by Age Groups

Femicide is a wide-spread lethal form of violence against women. Despite its diffusion, to date, very few studies analyzed possible victims’ age differences in regard to fatal risk factors for femicide. To this aim, we carried out archive research on Italian femicide cases in the last decade, by comparing prior types of violence suffered and motives for femicide, which are considered crucial fatal risk factors for femicide, across adolescent/young (15–24 years), adults (25–64 years) and older women (65–93 years). From 2010 to 2019 we found 1207 female victims. Characteristics of victims, perpetrators, and their relationship were consistent with those found by international studies and underlined that the majority of femicides were perpetrated by an intimate partner. The results regarding fatal risk factors comparisons across age groups showed the existence of significant differences regarding both types of violence suffered prior to femicide and motives for femicide. The results are discussed in terms of policy implication and intervention.