Perceptions of Risk in Cases of Intimate Partner Violence: Focus on Gender and Sexuality.

Research relating to intimate partner violence (IPV) responses and risk assessments are plentiful but center around a heteronormative framework omitting various gender and sexuality configurations. This study sought to evaluate how the gender and sexuality of IPV perpetrators and victims, as well as categorizations of risk, influence perceptions. Participants (N = 1,481) were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk and were asked to read a fictional vignette regarding an IPV incident with varying gender and implied sexuality of the perpetrator/victim and risk conditions. Participants were asked questions relating to perpetrator dangerousness, victim experience, influence of risk, and sentencing recommendations. Overall, man-identifying perpetrators were seen as more dangerous and intentional than woman-identifying perpetrators, while woman victims were seen as more vulnerable to harm than man victims. These findings have implications that (a) show promise for the successful implementation of risk communication systems but (b) necessitate a requirement for more education and training surrounding Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexua IPV.