Campaigns against intimate partner violence toward women in Portugal: Types of prevention and target audiences

Abstract

Understanding the objectives and groups targeted by previous campaigns to prevent intimate partner violence will prove useful in developing future such efforts. This study examines the types of prevention and audiences of Portuguese poster campaigns against Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) toward women, comparing governmental and nongovernmental organizations and observing how objectives evolved between 2000 and 2011. These comparisons were made through inductive and deductive content analysis of 74 posters – received after contacting 1,097 institutions – using standardized residual analysis from the chi-square test. Results indicated tertiary prevention as the main aim and the general population as the main target audience. Differences in these regards were found between public and private organizations, and campaigns were found to have changed over the years, mainly concerning target audiences. This study provides an overview of the directions of the campaigns against IPV over 11 years; these emphasized the urgency of informing abused or at-risk women about resources available in the community and strategies for getting help, and they sought to alert the general population that IPV is a public crime that everyone has a responsibility to combat.