Intimate Partner Homicide: A Meta-analysis of Risk Factors

Article under critique: Matias, A., Goncalves, M., Soeiro, C., & Matos, M. (2020). Intimate

partner homicide: A meta-analysis of risk factors. Aggression and violent behavior, 50,

101358.

The article under review is titled as “Intimate Partner Homicide: A Meta-analysis of Risk

Factors” where the authors aim to identify the main scientific studies behind characterization

of the intimate partner homicide perpetuator and victim and the reason why homicide occurs

in intimate relationships. Conflicts may vary from straightforward arguments to heated

conversations, and they can sometimes escalate to more severe types of domestic violence,

such as physical, psychological, and sexual assault. Conflicts are increasingly recognised to

occur in all situations, including those inside families. Domestic violence is now seen to be a

severe criminal and a societal issue with wide-ranging effects. It was formerly thought of as a

problem that only affected the individual, lived in secrecy while behind closed doors. In

general, useful statistics and significant information are hard to get by in nations that gather

murder data. For instance, there is insufficient information on the victim's gender and age,

their link to the offender, or the sort of murder. In almost 1 in 7 homicide cases around the

world, an intimate partner is killed (Koivisto, 2015). Many researchers have attempted to

pinpoint the IPH risk variables associated with the victim, the offender, or even past marital

dynamics. There is a limited understanding of the varying factors involved in the IPH

committed by women against their spouses since the bulk of research on this subject have

concentrated on femicide. The research claims that prior and ongoing abuse and violence are

the primary causes of IPH. Although there has been a thorough analysis done on IPH in some

areas, there is still a gap in the literature which this article aims to cover systematically.
The research methods used in this article are mainly meta-analysis by accumulating the

results and findings of previous studies and conducting a systematic analysis of those results

to arrive at conclusions. The methodology involved using 8 database software such as

PubMed, PsycINFO, Medline etc. 1291 results were obtained for articles about intimate

partner homicide, or spousal homicide or femicide.

Critique the article

Although the article has used numerous studies to provide a systematic finding on intimate

partner homicide there are some limitations involved in the methodology used to search for

relevant articles and exclusion criteria as well. The exclusion criteria involved excluding

articles that had no comparison group and were descriptive. In my opinion, these articles

should have been included as they provide with important literature understudy for

characterization of perpetuator and victims of IPH. Another important limitation is that the

majority of research only address femicide gives a simplified interpretation of IPH, leaving

largely unexplored traits of female offenders and what sets them apart from male offenders.

Furthermore, as the search criteria for meta-analysis of the research included femicide, it

creates biased results for the sex of offender. Thus, the articles included in the research have

biased characteristics of offender where the perpetuator is restricted to males only. Articles

with female as perpetuator have been excluded this way.

 References

Kivisto, A. J. (2015). Male perpetrators of intimate partner homicide: A review and proposed

typology. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law online, 43(3),

300-312.