Using Police databases as a prospect to reduce under-recording of violence against women

Abstract

Objective: this study sought to evaluate the agreement between the Information System for Notifiable Health Problems (Sistema de Informação de Agravo de Notificação, SINAN) and Police data for cases of physical and sexual violence against women, as well as the profile of the assaulted women, the aggressions and the aggressors. Method: a cross-sectional study was conducted with cases in a city from Minas Gerais, notified to the SINAN and/or identified in the Police database between 2015 and 2016. A consolidated database was created, comprised by the eligible cases from both sources, with performance of descriptive analyses. An agreement analysis by means of the Fleiss Kappa test was performed in a paired database containing cases common to both databases. Results: a total of 1,185 cases comprised the consolidated database, whereas 56 were included in the paired one. There was 83.54% under-recording in the SINAN data, in addition to important information incompleteness. The Police database presented nearly eight times more recording of cases. Agreement of all the information was high/moderate for seven out of 11 characteristics evaluated for the common cases. In the consolidated databases, the victims were predominantly black-skinned, single or widowed, and aged between 18 and 39 years old. The main aggressors were men, mainly (former) partners and family members. Conclusion: under-recording and incompleteness of diverse information about violence against women in the SINAN is a reality that needs to be dealt with. Cross-referencing with Police data sources represent an alternative to improve quality of the information, reducing under-recording. Despite the underestimated data, it was noticed that physical and domestic violence, perpetrated by (former) partners against young and black-skinned women, continues to be prevalent, pointing to the fact that it should remain as the focus of public policies.