A Study of Factors Associated with Emotional Violence in Kenya

Emotional abuse refers to a pattern of behavior where one person seeks to control, manipulate, and dominate another person, often causing emotional harm and trauma. It is committed more frequently against women. The repeated occurrence of this in Kenya necessitated the conduct of this research work on the factors associated with emotional violence in the country. A total of 8444 respondents were considered in this study. We employed binary logistic, probit, and complementary-log log regression on the retrieved data. The data were collected from the Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS) via their website. Emotional violence has been identified as one of the most prevalent forms of violence against women globally (WHO, 2013). On average, Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) affects about 47% of the Kenya population. This study aimed to model some risk factors influencing emotional violence in Kenya and the investigation was carried out by observing the extent to which selected covariates such as number of other wives, number of children under the age of five , age at first marriage, partner’s age, education status, husband living in the house, husband’s smoking habit, marital duration, spending decision, number of sexual partner(s), husband’s jealousy, accusation from husband, money trust and partner’s ten-year age difference influence emotional violence. The result of the research work ascertained that “accusation from husband” is the factor which has the most significant impact on emotional violence.