Harnessing the Potential of Google Searches for Understanding Dynamics of Intimate Partner Violence Before and After the COVID-19 Outbreak.

ABSTRACT: Most social phenomena are inherently complex and hard to measure, often due to under-reporting, stigma, social desirability bias, and rapidly changing external circumstances. This is for instance the case of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), a highly-prevalent social phenomenon which has drastically risen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores whether big data-an increasingly common tool to track, nowcast, and forecast social phenomena in close-to-real time-might help track and understand IPV dynamics. We leverage online data from Google Trends to explore whether online searches might help reach "hard-to-reach" populations such as victims of IPV using Italy as a case-study. We ask the following questions: Can digital traces help predict instances of IPV-both potential thr

SUBMITTER: Koksal S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9150629 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature