how connection developsAn estimated 43.5 million women and 20.7 million men in the United States had experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetimes. Those figures come from the 2023/2024 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey data brief, published in February 2026 by Hui Zhang Kudon and colleagues at the CDC. They describe experiences within relationships that include current and former spouses, dating partners, and other romantic or sexual partners.
The report also examines psychological aggression, including humiliation and coercive control. Keeping these findings alongside the violence figures makes more of the experience visible. The survey asks about both acts of violence and conduct through which a partner restricts contact, controls resources, or takes over decisions. It also asks about consequences that reach into health, safety, work, school, and access to support.
Understanding the headline figures
The combined lifetime measure covered 34.0% of women and 17.0% of men. The corresponding 95% confidence intervals were 32.4% to 35.6% for women and 15.5% to 18.6% for men, showing the sampling uncertainty around those estimates. It counted people who reported one or more of three types of experience, contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. A person could report more than one type, so the percentages for separate categories cannot be added to obtain the total.
Lifetime figures describe accumulated experience up to the time of the survey. They do not mean that every person counted was living in an abusive relationship when they answered. Experiences involving former partners are included, and the events may have occurred much earlier in life.
The report separately examines the 12 months before each respondent completed the survey. For that period, the combined estimate was 5.2% of women and 2.3% of men, representing approximately 6.7 million women and 2.8 million men. These figures make recent experiences visible without confusing them with lifetime history. Because interviews were collected from September 2023 through September 2024, the measure concerns each person's preceding year, rather than a count of all incidents across two calendar years.
The percentages are weighted population estimates based on responses from 15,609 adults, including 8,842 women and 6,767 men. They are not totals from police reports or service records, counts of incidents, or percentages of people who perpetrated violence. The women and men in these figures are the people reporting victimization. Their contribution is to include experiences people report whether or not those experiences became known to a particular agency.
Different forms of violence carry different meanings
Physical violence by a partner was reported by 22.5% of women and 13.7% of men over their lifetimes. The survey included acts such as slapping, pushing, and shoving, along with severe violence such as being kicked, beaten, or attacked with a weapon. Severe physical violence was reported by 18.2% of women and 8.6% of men. These are overlapping measures, since someone could have experienced both less severe and severe acts.
Contact sexual violence was reported by 19.7% of women and 4.4% of men. This category includes several experiences, which the report distinguishes rather than treating as one uniform event. Among them are rape, unwanted sexual contact, and sexual coercion. A separate measure concerning being made to penetrate someone was asked of men.
Sexual coercion refers here to unwanted penetration following nonphysical pressure. The survey's definition includes repeated demands, threats to end a relationship or spread rumors, deceptive promises, and the use of influence or authority. Lifetime sexual coercion was reported by 14.2% of women and 2.9% of men. The category makes pressure within an intimate relationship visible even when physical force is not the means used.
Stalking has another specific definition. It involves repeated unwanted tactics by the same partner that cause fear, a sense of threat, or concern for someone's safety. The lifetime estimates were 12.2% for women and 4.2% for men. This definition connects the pattern of conduct with the fear or safety concerns it creates, rather than counting every unwanted contact as stalking.
Together, these categories show why one prevalence figure cannot describe every experience it contains. The report keeps the types separate so their extent can be understood without assuming that people counted in the same combined measure experienced the same conduct.
Psychological aggression and control over everyday life
Psychological aggression was examined separately from the combined violence-and-stalking measure. Over their lifetimes, 30.2% of women and 22.3% of men reported it. These percentages cannot simply be added to the earlier totals because some people experienced both.
The report distinguishes expressive aggression, such as being humiliated in front of others, from coercive control and entrapment. Expressive aggression was reported by 20.4% of women and 13.1% of men. Coercive control and entrapment were reported by 27.2% of women and 19.5% of men. This category records one or more of seven specified lifetime behaviors. It is the survey's operational measure, not a legal finding about each relationship or a description of how long a pattern of control lasted. Again, the categories overlap.
The questions make control concrete. The most commonly reported coercive behaviors for both women and men were a partner demanding to know their whereabouts and activities, and a partner trying to prevent contact with family or friends. The latter was reported by 16.0% of women and 10.6% of men. Those experiences concern access to relationships outside the partnership, including people who might offer companionship, another perspective, or help.
Other questions addressed being prevented from having one's own money, having personal decisions taken over, threats of physical harm, destruction of valued possessions, and a partner threatening self-harm because they were upset with the respondent. For example, 15.2% of women and 10.3% of men reported a partner making decisions that belonged to them. Being prevented from having their own money was reported by 8.8% of women and 4.8% of men.
These measures locate coercive control in ordinary parts of life. Money, contact with other people, privacy about one's movements, and authority over personal decisions are resources through which a person participates in the world. The survey records conduct that interferes with them, alongside conduct involving explicit threats.
For the preceding 12 months, psychological aggression was estimated at 3.4% of women and 2.5% of men. The report does not provide recent estimates for each specific coercive behavior because those detailed questions concerned lifetime experience. The lifetime pattern therefore cannot be relabeled as a description of the past year.
What the impact measure adds
The CDC also asked whether contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking had been accompanied by at least one specified impact. Across all women, 29.9% reported both a lifetime experience in that combined category and an impact. The corresponding figure for men was 13.0%.
These are percentages of the overall female and male populations, not percentages calculated only among people who experienced violence. They sit within the larger lifetime estimates of 34.0% and 17.0%. Keeping the denominator clear shows what the comparison means.
The impact category includes fear, concern for safety, symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress, injury, needing medical care, filing a police report, and missing work or school. The lifetime measure also includes needs for housing, advocacy, or legal services, and contact with a crisis hotline. It therefore captures a range of responses and needs, rather than measuring physical injury alone. Reporting a need for a service does not establish that the person received it, and reporting symptoms does not amount to a clinical diagnosis.
For the preceding year, the combined violence-or-stalking measure with at least one impact was 3.4% for women and 1.4% for men. Some items appeared only in the lifetime impact measure, so the two time frames are not identical lists of consequences. The findings nevertheless show why an account of violence extends beyond the act itself into the arrangements a person needs afterward.
Reading differences and gaps accurately
The report provides state estimates as well as national ones. These describe the histories of people living in each state when surveyed. They do not establish that every event occurred in that state. Some estimates have wide uncertainty ranges, and the CDC withholds figures when the sample is too small or the estimate too unstable. A missing figure is not a finding of no violence.
The same restraint applies to national categories. For example, the estimate for rape among men was not statistically stable enough to report. Some recent-experience categories could not be reported either. The published tables distinguish those gaps from measured values. They also distinguish estimates withheld for statistical instability from items marked unavailable because a specific recent-experience question was not asked. Neither kind of gap is a finding of no victimization.
The survey also changed. The 2023/2024 collection used address-based sampling and an approach inviting people to complete the survey online, alongside changes to some questions. The authors explicitly caution against comparing these estimates with earlier NISVS releases as though they demonstrated a rise or decline in violence.
Other limits affect who is represented. The response rate was 16.5%, and the sampling frame excluded adults in institutions and people who were unhoused. The authors describe efforts to reach initial nonrespondents, while acknowledging that exclusions may underestimate the extent of violence. The figures are useful estimates with a defined scope, rather than a complete count of everyone's experience.
Connecting the findings with support
The authors' discussion links prevention with the conditions around relationships. They describe approaches involving relationship skills, supportive adults, protective environments, and economic support for families. They also identify legal, medical, housing, employment, childcare, and social support services as parts of a comprehensive response. These are recommendations informed by other prevention evidence cited in the report, rather than interventions tested by this survey.
The survey helps make the range of needs understandable. Its measures include interference with family contact and money, as well as injury, fear, missed work, and housing needs. A response concerned with safety therefore has reason to involve several kinds of support. The data give those needs a place in the public account of intimate partner violence, alongside the number of people who report experiencing it.
Sources
Zhang Kudon, H., Zhu, S., Chen, B., Breiding, M. J., Leemis, R. W., Zhang, X., Schwank, A., & Basile, K. C. (2026). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2023/2024 intimate partner violence data brief. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.