Identification of Associated Factors and Prediction for the Level of Intimate Partner Violence against Women in Sri Lanka

Intimate partner violence (IPV) can be defined as a serious social problem rapidly increasing in Sri Lanka as same as in other countries in the world. The Sri Lanka Demographic and Health Survey (SLDHS) 2016 revealed that 17% of married women age 15-49 in Sri Lanka have become victims of IPV. The objectives of this study were to determine the factors associated with IPV against women in Sri Lanka and to develop an appropriate regression model and feedforward neural network (FNN) to predict the Violence Index which describes the level of IPV against women in the country. The data records of 2494 ever-married women that have experienced IPV were considered from Sri Lanka Demographic and Health Survey 2016. The Violence Index was estimated using Multiple Correspondence Analysis. Gamma regression analysis revealed that religion, education level of the woman, husband’s occupation, woman’s married time, the age difference between husband and wife, Empowerment Indicator, enough money for daily household expenses, and household alcohol consumption were significantly associated with IPV against women. The optimum FNN consists of one hidden layer with 3 neurons provided a better prediction on the Violence Index with the minimum mean squared error for the testing set. Based on the prediction accuracy, the FNN was found to be better than the gamma regression model. The findings of this study would support an effort to develop the current policies and implement prevention programs against IPV in Sri Lanka.

GESTAO MUNICIPAL DA SEGURANÇA PÚBLICA: responsabilidade dos municípios brasileiros no combate à violência

Os mecanismos de gestão da segurança pública são instrumentos administrativos que potencializam os resultados de políticas nessa área. É o caso dos Conselhos, Planos, Fundos e Secretarias Municipais de Segurança Pública, além das Guardas Municipais. O artigo tem como objetivo verificar se a adoção de tais mecanismos produz impacto nos indicadores de violência. Paratanto, foram construídos o Índice de Gestão Municipal da Segurança Pública e o Índice de Violência. A partir de análise de correlaçãoentre tais variáveis, aponta que o nível atual de adoção dos mecanismos de gestão avaliados é muito baixo em todas as unidades federativas do Brasil, e não consegue influenciar os níveis de violência. Conclui que, ao omitir-se de implementar mecanismos degestão da segurança pública, o poder municipal, como ente mais próximo da população, enfraquece uma estrutura administrativa quedeveria servir de base para as políticas públicas voltadas para a redução da violência no âmbito local.Palavras-chave: Poder municipal, gestão, políticas públicas, violência.MUNICIPAL MANAGEMENT OF THE PUBLIC SAFETY: responsibility of the Brazilian municipalities for combating violenceAbstract: Mechanisms of the public security management are administrative tools that have improved the policies results in this area. This is the case of the Councils, Plans, Funds and Public Safety Secretariats, besides Municipal Guards. The paper aims to verify whether the adoption of such mechanisms has impacts on the violence indicators. Therefore, were built the Municipal Public Security Management Index and Violence Index. From the analysis of correlation between these variables was observed that the present level of adoption of management mechanisms is very low in all federative units of Brazil, and does not influence the levels of violence. Concludes that to omit to implement mechanisms of public safety management, the municipal power, as nearest entity of the population, weakens the administrative structure which should be the basis of all local public security policies.Key words: Municipal government, management, public policies, violence.