Excess Google Searches for Child Abuse and Intimate Partner Violence During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Infoveillance Approach.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has created environments with increased risk factors for household violence, such as unemployment and financial uncertainty. At the same time, it led to the introduction of policies to mitigate financial uncertainty. Further, it hindered traditional measurements of household violence.

Objective

Using an infoveillance approach, our goal was to determine if there were excess Google searches related to exposure to child abuse, intimate partner violence (IPV), and child-witnessed IPV during the COVID-19 pandemic and if any excesses are temporally related to shelter-in-place and economic policies.

Methods

Data on relative search volume for each violence measure was extracted using the Google Health Trends application programming interface f

SUBMITTER: Riddell CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9202515 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature