Locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in Belgium

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of the respondents and their child (ren)

	n (n = 870)	%	% children victimized	X²; df; p-value
Age [mean = 40.43; SD = 7.01]				15.14; 3; .002
22–34 years	179	20.57	7.26
35–44 years	476	54.71	16.18
45–54 years	184	21.15	21.74
> 54 years	31	3.56	12.90
Gender				.110*
Female (incl. trans-women)	706	81.15	16.43
Male (incl. trans-men)	160	18.39	10.62
Other	3	0.34	33.33
Education				.991*
No school or primary school	4	0.46	25.00
Highschool (technical, religious, …)	158	18.16	15.19
Higher education (University, College, …)	708	81.38	15.40
Financial difficulty 1st wave				1.38; 2; .501
No	643	73.91	15.55
Yes	216	24.83	14.35
No answer	11	1.26	27.27
Financial difficulty 2nd wave				.86; 2; .650
No	693	79.65	15.30
Yes	165	18.96	15.15
No answer	12	1.38	25.00
Household size^a [mean = 2.77; SD = 0.95]				13.78; 4; .008
1	67	7.70	16.42
2	260	29.88	11.54
3	389	44.72	14.14
4	124	14.25	24.19
≥ 5	30	3.45	26.67
Age of the children^b
0–5 years	401	46.09	9.98	16.81; 1; <.001
6–12 years	500	57.47	19.20	13.01; 1; <.001
13-17 years	262	30.11	24.05	21.50; 1; <.001

^aRespondents are not included in the count. 1 = the respondent lives with another person in the same household. In this case 1 = the respondent lives with 1 child. 2 = the respondent lives with 1 child and 1 other adult (e.g. partner) or with 2 children. 3 = the respondent lives with 1 to 3 children (if 2 children, then 1 adult or if 1 child, then 2 adults, …
^bRespondents were able to select multiple age-categories for their children, which means that the total percentage of these three age-categories can surpass 100%. Respondents with children aged older than 17 years were excluded from the sample
* Fisher’s Exact Test (instead of Chi Square Test): p-value
Because the comparisons in this table involved 9 independent tests, we adopted a Bonferroni-corrected significance level of .05/9 = .006 for these analyses
Abbreviations: SD Standard deviation

ISSN: 1471-2458