Online abuse and harassment

A new online Ipsos survey for Amnesty International has indicated the scale of abuse that women encounter online in Britain and seven other countries.

21% of women aged 18-55 in the UK reported that they had ever experienced abuse or harassment online, with 18% of these women saying that they had received abuse or harassment from a current or former partner, and 59% saying they had received abuse from someone that they did not know personally at all.

Across all 8 countries, 23% of women aged 18-55 who were interviewed said that they had ever experienced abuse or harassment online.

• Amnesty International press release

Technical Note

On behalf of Amnesty, Ipsos surveyed women in eight countries, using an online quota survey.

Around 500 women aged 18-55 were interviewed in each country, via the Ipsos Online Panel system.

In each country, fieldwork quotas were set on the age, region and working status of the women surveyed according to known population proportions in each country.

Data were weighted using a RIM weighting method, to the same targets to correct for potential biases in the sample.

The survey sample in each country was designed to be nationally representative of women in that country. The margin of error for the total sample in each country varies between 3% and 4%.

Overall, 4,000 women were surveyed across 8 countries, 911 of whom said that they had experienced online abuse or harassment and 688 of whom said that they had experienced this on a social media site.

Please see below for details of samples interviewed in each country.