An Empirical Investigation of Disability-Related Interpersonal Violence Through an Intersectional Research Paradigm: Methodological Considerations and Implications

The study uses an econometric approach to disaggregate data on disability related violence reported in Accident and Emergency departments in London to investigate the extent to which the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and age characteristics of disabled people increase their risk of experiencing interpersonal violence. Our empirical findings suggest that females and older individuals are generally more likely to be interpersonal violence victims. The disability dummy is positive and significant, irrespective of gender or ethnicity. This implies that persons with disabilities are more likely to be victims of interpersonal violence than individuals without disabilities, regardless of gender and ethnicity. The most important discovery concerns the magnitude of the dummy coefficient regarding the disability of individuals. The coefficient is the largest for females of Black origin with disabilities, followed by Asians, with white origin exhibiting the smallest coefficient. This suggests that people with disabilities of Black origin are more likely to experience interpersonal violence than the Asian or white community. The study outcomes provide novel and rigorous empirically validated knowledge of the intersectional vectors of power that impact the risk of experiencing disability-related interpersonal violence while informing the development of intersectionality-based policy approaches to tackling disability-related interpersonal violence.