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EQUAL PATH Foundation
Sources

Where our numbers come from

Every statistic in our films The Facts and The Trend, and on our home page, with its source, data year, and link. We don’t use invented statistics.

CDC: National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), 2016/2017 Report on Intimate Partner Violence

Published 2022 · Data years 2016–2017 · Used in The Facts and on the home page
  • 41.0% of women (2 in 5) experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime and reported a related impact.
  • 26.3% of men (1 in 4) experienced the same, with a related impact.

https://www.cdc.gov/nisvs/documentation/NISVSReportonIPV_2022.pdf

CDC advises against comparing 2016/2017 results with earlier NISVS years because the method changed, so we use these figures to show scale, not a trend.

Bureau of Justice Statistics: Criminal Victimization, 2024 (National Crime Victimization Survey)

Published September 2025 (NCJ 310547) · Data years 2020–2024 · Used in both films and on the home page
  • 1,110,040 domestic violence victimizations in 2024 (Table 1; persons age 12+).
  • Domestic violence rate per 1,000 people: 2020 3.1 · 2021 3.3 · 2022 4.9 · 2023 4.1 · 2024 3.9.
  • Intimate partner violence rate: 1.7 per 1,000 in 2020 to 2.7 in 2024. BJS reports this as an increase, significant at the 90% level. The 2022 rate (3.4) was higher than 2024.
  • 64.5% of domestic violence victimizations were reported to police in 2024 (Table 4), so 35.5% were not.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv24.pdf

Bureau of Justice Statistics: Criminal Victimization, 2019 (NCVS), Table 3

Data year 2019 · Used in The Trend
  • Domestic violence rate: 4.2 per 1,000 persons age 12+ in 2019.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv19.pdf

Council on Criminal Justice / National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice (Piquero et al.)

February 2021 · Data from 2020 · Used in The Trend
  • Reported domestic violence incidents in the U.S. rose an average of 8.1% after the 2020 stay-at-home orders (meta-analysis of 12 U.S. studies).

https://counciloncj.org/new-analysis-shows-8-increase-in-u-s-domestic-violence-incidents-following-pandemic-stay-at-home-orders/ · https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9582712/

This measures reported incidents (police calls, crime reports, hotline and health records), not total prevalence.

National Domestic Violence Hotline: “Our History”

Milestones through July 2026 · Used in The Facts
  • 5 millionth contact answered May 8, 2019.
  • 8 millionth contact answered July 29, 2026. Both are cumulative totals since 1996.

https://www.thehotline.org/about/history-of-the-hotline/

Contact volume reflects both demand and access (for example, the text service launched in 2021), so it is not a direct measure of how much violence occurs.

The honest trend

Since 2019, national survey rates of domestic violence have gone up and down (4.2 in 2019, 3.9 in 2024, per 1,000 people) rather than rising steadily, and not every year-to-year change is statistically significant. Intimate partner violence rose from 2020 to 2024, reported incidents rose after the 2020 lockdowns, and demand for the Hotline keeps growing. The need hasn’t gone away, and that’s why prevention and awareness matter.

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