Redevelopment of domestic abuse statistics: user survey 2024

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) undertook a user engagement exercise to collect feedback on the redevelopment of domestic abuse statistics for the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). This took place between 3 December 2024 and 5 January 2025 and was the final part of wider engagement with stakeholders to seek views on our redevelopment proposals. A user feedback survey was published alongside Redevelopment of domestic abuse statistics: research update December 2024 which detailed our extensive analysis and trial outputs.  

This update provides information on feedback on the following.

• Content of the new domestic abuse survey questions.
• Estimates produced from the new questions.
• Methodology used to produce the estimates.
• Supporting information on the estimates.
• Trial domestic abuse outputs.

For more information, please see the overview section of this user survey page, below.

We received a total of 14 responses from a variety of stakeholders.They covered the relevant sectors and the key users of this data. We also engaged more widely in the preceding work to formulate our changes.

Below is a table that shows a breakdown of the types of users who replied.   

Table 1: Respondent count by sector   

Survey respondents provided us with a substantial amount of useful feedback. Users told us that they used our domestic abuse statistics and data for academic research, improving policy or processes, and planning service provision.

The survey findings showed that over three-quarters (77%) of users thought we should replace the existing CSEW domestic abuse questions with the new domestic abuse questions (PDF, 471KB) we had been trialling on the survey since April 2023.

We asked users to what extent they agreed with the statement:

“The new domestic abuse questions accurately capture the lived experiences of domestic abuse victims.”

Of the 13 responses to this question, 54% of respondents either “agreed” or “strongly agreed”, 8% “neither agreed or disagreed” and 39% “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed”.

When asked whether they thought some abuse types were missing from the questions, half of users felt there were, with the other half feeling the questions captured all types. In addition, specific requests were made for:

• broader questions on technology-facilitated abuse
• questions specifically identifying faith-based abuse
• questions on child victims witnessing domestic abuse

4 in 5 users (82%) found it “very easy” or “quite easy” to access the trial outputs, while the remaining 18% found it “neither easy nor difficult”.

More information on the user survey responses can be found in our Redevelopment of domestic abuse statistics: research update May 2025 article.

We used the survey findings as a component of our evaluation of the new questions along with the substantial cognitive testing, previous user feedback and data analysis outlined in our Evaluating a new measure of domestic abuse article. With all of this information we have decided to change to using the new survey questions on the Crime Survey for England and Wales to measure domestic abuse from April 2025.

This means that, from April 2025, our official statistics on domestic abuse will be derived from the new domestic abuse questions. In addition, the estimates published in Section 3 of our Redevelopment of domestic abuse statistics: research update December 2024 article should now be treated as official statistics.

We are extremely grateful to everyone involved in the redevelopment of the domestic abuse survey questions. We look forward to future engagement to help shape the new domestic abuse outputs, as we continue to develop them following the permanent inclusion of the new questions.