In 2014, FRA released findings from the first-ever comparable EU-wide violence against women survey. There has been no similar study until the EU-GBV survey.
Since the first survey, international, EU and national policies and strategies have been adopted to tackle violence against women and support victims’ rights. This includes the landmark Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention), which the EU also signed and ratified.
Eurostat coordinated the data collection in 18 EU Member States where the survey was implemented by the national statistical authorities, while Italy agreed to share the data based on its national surveys to provide comparable data for the main indicators.
For eight EU Member States FRA and EIGE were responsible for the data collection. These were Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Romania and Sweden. Ipsos NV – an international survey research company – ran the survey for FRA and EIGE in accordance with the methodological guidelines set out by Eurostat.
The data collection took place in different countries at different times between September 2020 and March 2024. National statistical authorities timed the survey so that it ran alongside their other data collection obligations. They also needed to ensure the availability of experienced, trained women interviewers, so that the data was collected in a sound, ethical manner. In some countries, the survey fieldwork coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic. This meant that some countries had to quickly adopt a different approach as face-to-face interviews were no longer possible.
Data from each country was transmitted to Eurostat, which carried out data quality checks in addition to quality assurance measures taken at the country level. Eurostat also peformed these checks on the data collected by FRA and EIGE.