On the other hand, a 2005 study using Idaho as a sample state showed that police incident reports involving domestic violence were 2.7 times higher on New Year’s Day than a normal daily average. And a 2010 study from the University of Pennsylvania looking at calls to law enforcement involving intimate partner violence in an unnamed major U.S. city found New Year’s Day also had a significantly higher amount of calls than the daily average—with 56 calls on New Year’s Day, compared to 34 for the average day.

So why is there such a discrepancy between what local law enforcement and resource centers report and what the numbers to the National Domestic Violence Hotline show?

A likely answer to the contradictory picture is that victims are simply exhausted after the holidays, and are just looking for a short-term solution, like calling the police or walking into the local shelter. The national hotline, on the other hand, is often used as a resource for victims who want to understand all their options in order to leave an abusive situation permanently, Hacskaylo said.

After the holidays, calls to the national hotline start increasing 5 percent over the first two weeks of the year. This creates a bit of a domino effect: Survivors will reach out to police and local shelters first, then seek help from national resources.

“Survivors will often reach out to law enforcement or a local shelter to immediately resolve a violent situation that’s happening, but it can take a bit of time before they’re ready to reach out the national hotline,” said Kenya Fairley, senior director of capacity building and education at the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, an organization devoted to policy research on issues related to domestic violence.

It isn’t uncommon to see women leave a shelter around the holidays to normalize things—especially if children are in the picture—to be close to family or a faith community, only to come right back once the festivities are over, Fairley said. Some abusers will also be able to keep violent behavior under wraps when loved ones are around for festivities, only to have an outburst once the holidays are over, prompting survivors to ask, “Is this really how I want to spend another year?”

There is also the issue of research funding—there just hasn’t been enough money to do an exhaustive report on exactly how many people are reaching out, the different channels they may be using, where in the U.S. they are, and who exactly they’re contacting. And frankly, domestic violence advocates are okay with this. “Any extra money we do have, let me use it on transitional housing, let me use it to put someone back on their feet. For people working in the shelters, domestic violence is pervasive all the time, I don’t need a report to tell me that,” said Kim Pentico, director of the economic justice project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence.