Introduction

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a major social problem reported in almost all socio-cultural contexts. This chapter defines what we mean by the term, why it is important to study IPV and analyses its incidence and regional variations at the global level. A broad literature survey is undertaken to identify research gaps of existing studies. Based on the literature review, we put forward the research questions and hypotheses of the study. The remaining part of the chapter describes the data set used in the analysis and reports on the sample profile.