What academic studies compare victimisation survey estimates of sexual violence between Poland and the UK?
Executive summary
Three strands of academic and large-scale comparative work enable direct or quasi-direct comparison of victimisation survey estimates of sexual violence between Poland and the UK: the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) EU‑wide survey and methodology work (including a pilot that covered Poland and informed cross‑country comparability) [1] [2], a peer‑reviewed measurement‑invariance study published in BMJ Open that tested whether FRA intimate partner sexual‑violence items are comparable across EU countries including Poland and the UK [3] [4], and older international victimisation efforts such as the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) which provide broad cross‑national victimisation benchmarks that include both countries [5].
1. What the direct comparative studies are and what they do
The flagship cross‑national source is FRA’s Violence Against Women EU‑wide survey, which used a single standardized questionnaire across Member States and explicitly piloted instruments in six countries (including Poland) to improve comparability and allow pan‑EU estimates that include the UK when UK data are available in comparable sweeps [1] [2]. Building on that instrument, a dedicated measurement‑invariance paper — published in BMJ Open and available on PMC — evaluated whether the FRA items on physical and sexual intimate partner violence (IPVAW) function the same way across EU countries and reported that configural, metric and scalar invariance for these measures was supported across all included countries, enabling valid comparisons of sexual IPVAW levels between Poland and the UK [3] [4].
2. What the broader comparative victimisation frameworks add
Longitudinal international efforts like the ICVS provide additional context for cross‑national victimisation comparisons by asking representative samples in many countries about personal experiences of crime, including sexual incidents; these datasets have been used historically to compare countries such as Poland and the UK on overall victimisation patterns, though sexual‑offence detail can be patchy and methodology varies between waves [5]. Eurostat and EIGE syntheses and country profiles then aggregate national survey and administrative inputs — for example EIGE’s country profile for Poland that documents underreporting to police and frames survey‑derived prevalence estimates — which situate national victimisation survey results within administrative reporting realities [6] [7].
3. Key findings researchers report about Poland vs the UK (and caveats)
Comparative measurement work groups Poland among countries with relatively lower factor means for sexual intimate‑partner violence on the FRA‑derived sexual‑violence factor while the UK appears among countries with higher factor means in some groupings, a pattern identified by the BMJ Open confirmatory analyses [3] [4]. However, authors and EU agencies repeatedly warn that cross‑national differences in reported prevalence reflect a mix of true incidence, cultural thresholds for labelling behaviour as sexual violence, willingness to disclose, and methodological differences in surveys and translations — all of which complicate simple country‑to‑country ranking [1] [2] [8].
4. Methodological strengths and persistent limitations
The strength of the FRA instrument and the BMJ Open invariance testing is that they explicitly confront comparability: translation protocols, pilot testing, and statistical tests of measurement invariance were used to justify cross‑country comparisons of survey estimates [2] [3]. Yet gaps remain: some residual misfit in single‑factor models for several countries required two‑factor solutions, and surveys still cannot fully eliminate cultural reporting biases or differences in legal definitions and police recording practices that skew administrative comparisons [4] [8]. Independent qualitative work on Polish women’s experiences in Poland and the UK highlights how migration, cultural norms and institutional contexts alter recognition and reporting of violence, underlining why survey numbers need contextual interpretation [9].
5. What this means for anyone comparing Poland and the UK
Academic studies that explicitly compare survey estimates do exist — notably FRA’s EU survey and the BMJ Open measurement‑invariance analysis — and they enable cautious, statistically informed comparisons of sexual‑violence victimisation between Poland and the UK while flagging important caveats [1] [3]. Complementary international surveys (ICVS) and national analytics (EIGE, Eurostat) add context but also emphasise chronic underreporting and definitional variation, meaning policy conclusions must weigh methodological nuance as heavily as headline prevalence differences [5] [7] [6]. Where claims fall outside what these sources cover, reporting limitations should be acknowledged rather than overstated [1] [2].