ABOUT THE PARTNER ABUSE
STATE OF KNOWLEDGE PROJECT (PASK)

The world's most complete and accurate domestic
violence research data base, 
5,000+ pages, including more than
4,000 peer-reviewed studies.

Courtesy of the scholarly journal, Partner Abuse
www.springerpub.com/pa

and the Association of Domestic Violence Intervention Providers
www.domesticviolenceintervention.net

Over the years, research on partner abuse has become unnecessarily fragmented and politicized. The purpose of The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (PASK) is to bring together in a rigorously evidence-based, transparent and methodological manner existing knowledge about partner abuse with reliable, up-to-date research that can easily be accessed both by researchers and the general public.

In 2010, family violence scholars from the United States, Canada. Mexico and the U.K. were invited to conduct an extensive and thorough review of the empirical literature, in the most important topic areas, including: prevalence rates, dynamics, risk factors, impact on victims and families, criminal justice policy, assessment, prevention, and treatment.  They were asked to conduct a formal search for published, peer-reviewed studies on these topics through standard, widely used search programs, and then catalogue and summarize all known research studies relevant to each major topic and its sub-topics. In the interest of thoroughness and transparency, the researchers agreed to summarize all quantitative studies published in peer-reviewed journals after 1990, as well as any major studies published prior to that time, and to clearly specify exclusion criteria. Included studies are organized in extended tables, each table containing summaries of studies relevant to its particular sub-topic.

In this unprecedented undertaking, a total of 42 scholars and 70 research assistants at 20 universities and research institutions spent two years or more researching their topics and writing the results. Approximately 12,000 studies were considered and more than 1,700 were summarized and organized into tables. The 17 manuscripts, which provide a review of findings on each of the topics, for a total of 2,657 pages, appear in 5 consecutive special issues of the peer-reviewed journal Partner Abuse.

The entire PASK database was updated in 2025-2026 to include a review of the research published after 2012-2013. Altogether, the completed PASK project has involved 64 domestic violence scholars plus several dozen research assistants who altogether reviewed and considered more than 25,000 journal articles, with 4,000+ eventually included in the updated tables available on this website. Full manuscripts of this most recent research have been published in five special issues of Partner Abuse, from January, 2025 - July, 2026.

A 59-page comprehensive summary of the entire PASK research findings is available for free on this website (click on the link to Grand Summary on the left side of the home page.)

All conclusions, including the extent to which the research evidence supports or undermines current theories, are based strictly on the data collected.

Contact: domesticviolenceresearch@comcast.net or johnmhamel@comcast.net