Domestic abuse victims

Published

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1. Main facts and figures

  • in the year ending March 2023, 4.4% of people aged 16 or over in England and Wales reported experiencing domestic abuse in the 12 months before being surveyed
  • people with a mixed ethnic background experienced the highest rates of domestic abuse (7.9%)
  • Asian people experienced the lowest rates (2.0%)
  • white women (6.0%) were more likely than white men (3.4%) to have experienced domestic abuse

2. Things you need to know

What the data measures

The data shows the percentage of people aged 16 or over who reported being victims of domestic abuse in the 12 months before being surveyed.

Domestic abuse includes non-sexual abuse, sexual assault and stalking. You can read more about the definition of domestic abuse used in the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Percentages in the charts and tables are rounded to 1 decimal place.

Not included in the data

An error discovered in January 2023 resulted in missing data for key questions relating to partner abuse, as well as variables derived from that data. This error affected four months of data, from 1 October 2022 to 30 January 2023. As a result, estimates for the year ending March 2023 are based on eight months of interviews, and exclude the affected survey months. More details are available here.

Data based on fewer than 50 respondents is not shown. This is because the numbers are too small to make reliable generalisations.

The data does not include:

  • the number of times someone reported being a victim, or the seriousness of any crime
  • people living in communal establishments, such as care homes, university accommodation and prisons
  • crimes against commercial or public sector bodies

The ethnic categories used in this data

Data is shown for the 18 ethnic groups used in the 2011 Census.

Methodology

Read the detailed methodology document (PDF opens in a new window or tab) for the data on this page.

Data before April 2022 only included responses from people aged between 16 and 74 years old. Data for the year ending March 2023 included responses from anyone aged over 16 years old. This means it cannot be directly compared with previous years.

The data is based on survey data. Find out more about:

In the data file

Download the data for:

  • confidence intervals for each ethnic group – find out more about how we use confidence intervals to determine how reliable estimates are
  • the unweighted number of people surveyed

3. By ethnicity

Percentage of people aged 16 and over who reported being victims of domestic abuse in the previous 12 months, and number of people surveyed, by ethnicity
Ethnicity Percentage Sample size
All 4.4 16,686
Asian 2.0 1,101
Bangladeshi N/A* 75
Chinese N/A* 123
Indian 2.1 472
Pakistani 1.9 229
Asian other 1.3 202
Black 3.5 475
Black African 2.8 319
Black Caribbean 6.2 128
Black other N/A* 28
Mixed 7.9 229
Mixed White/Asian 5.3 74
Mixed White/Black African N/A* 32
Mixed White/Black Caribbean 20.6 63
Mixed other 3.2 60
White 4.7 14,691
White British 4.8 13,598
White Irish 5.4 144
White Gypsy/Traveller N/A* 4
White other 4.2 945
Other N/A* 174
Arab N/A* 49
Any other N/A* 125

Download table data for ‘By ethnicity’ (CSV) Source data for ‘By ethnicity’ (CSV)

4. Data sources

Source

Type of data

Survey data

Type of statistic

National Statistics

Publisher

Office for National Statistics

Publication frequency

Yearly

Purpose of data source

Crime survey data is used alongside police data on crime to give the government information about the extent and nature of crime in England and Wales.

The survey records all types of crimes experienced by people, including those crimes that may not have been reported to the police.

5. Download the data

Victims of domestic abuse data - Spreadsheet (csv) 29 KB

measure, ethnicity, ethnicity type, time, time type, geography, geography type, geography code, gender, age, value, value type, lower and upper confidence intervals, sample size