Ideas in this flowchart

• Multilevel risk factors influence the likelihood of becoming an intimate partner violence perpetrator or victim.
• Risk factors contribute to intimate partner violence but may not be direct causes.
• Being identified as at risk does not mean that a person will become involved in violence.
• Risk arises from interacting individual, relationship, community, and societal factors.
• Understanding these factors can reveal opportunities for prevention.
• Individual factors include low self-esteem, low income, low academic achievement, young age, unemployment, isolation, emotional insecurity, depression, anger, and antisocial or borderline personality traits.
• Individual behavioral and developmental factors include substance use, youth aggression or delinquency, prior physical abuse, psychological aggression, abuse exposure, poor parenting, physical discipline, strict gender beliefs, and desires for power and control.
• Relationship factors include marital conflict, instability, dominance and control, economic stress, and unhealthy family relationships.
• Community factors include poverty, overcrowding, low social capital, and weak community sanctions or unwillingness to intervene against intimate partner violence.
• Societal factors include traditional gender norms that assign domestic submission and caregiving to women and authority and financial support to men.
• Experiencing or witnessing physical or psychological abuse is consistently one of the strongest predictors of perpetration.