AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AMONG MARRIED MARKET WOMEN IN AYETORO EPE, LAGOS STATE

Abstract

The study investigated the domestic violence among married market women in Aiyetoro market, Epe, Lagos State with more focus on prevalence of domestic violence, its knowledge, and negative attitude towards reporting of domestic violence. A descriptive research design was adopted for this study while convenient sampling technique was used to choose the participants of this study. A self-designed questionnaire was used for data collection, which was pre-tested through test-re-test and yielded a reliability coefficients (index) of .850. Four research questions were formulated and tested. Analysis of data was done using descriptive statistics, ANOVA,  and t-test fixed at the .05 significant level. A total of 350 participants were included in the study, their ages ranged from 16-56 years with a mean age of 35.780. About half (53.2%) of the respondents had secondary education; 238 (71.5%) reported that their spouse were fully employed. In relation to marriage duration, 181 (54.4%) were in the first five (5) years. The market women with negative attitude towards reporting of domestic violence has a beta value of .220 and t-value of 3.513 significant at .000 alpha level (f = 2.610, P = 0.00). Also, study showed a significant difference between the knowledge of domestic violence and educational level of the market women (F _{(4, 333)} = 3.230, p = .007); and no significant difference between attitude towards reporting of domestic violence and experiencing domestic violence (t = 1.109; P = .156). The study concluded that the inability of the women to detect abuse from a distance and lack of empowerment with the right set of knowledge and information may be part of the reasons why the occurrence is not curtailed. Based on the outcome of this study, it was recommended that increasing women's knowledge about the recognition of warning signs of domestic violence is necessary.