Advancing domestic violence program evaluation: Development and validation of the Measure of Victim Empowerment Related to Safety (MOVERS).

Abstract

Objective: As budgets tighten and demand grows, domestic violence (DV) programs are facing enormous pressure to demonstrate the impact of their work. A critical challenge to doing so is the absence of outcome measures that reflect DV programs’ missions and survivors’ goals for themselves. Academic-community partnerships are critical to developing such measures. The 2 aims of this study were to (a) develop and validate a measure—the Measure of Victim Empowerment Related to Safety (MOVERS)—that taps a key goal shared by DV program staff and program participants, and (b) draw on and model the benefits of community-based participatory research. Method: We evaluated the factor structure, reliability, and validity of MOVERS through a 2-stage process in which we developed a university-community partnership with 17 DV programs across the Northeast and administered a survey to 230 help-seeking survivors. Results: A scree plot and parallel analysis supported a 3-factor solution, with subscales assessing the extent to which a survivor (a) has developed a set of safety-related goals and a belief in her ability to accomplish them, (b) perceives that she has the support she needs to move toward safety, and (c) senses that her actions toward safety will not cause new problems in other domains. Each subscale demonstrated good internal reliability and construct validity. Conclusion: MOVERS provides a tool for assessing a key dimension of survivors’ experience and enables the evaluation of domestic violence program practices in ways that are consistent with core program and survivor goals.

The weWomen and ourCircle randomized controlled trial protocol: A web-based intervention for immigrant, refugee and indigenous women with intimate partner violence experiences

“…Empowerment related to safety is measured using the Measure of Victim Empowerment Related to Safety (MOVERS) scale[47]. MOVERS is a 13-item scale that measures empowerment within the domain of safety.…”

Interventions to prevent elder abuse in the community: a mixed-methods systematic review

“…Empowerment can be defined as a significant change in experiences of power lived by individuals in their interactions in society. It is constructed through an interactive process in which individuals devoid of power establish a significant goal for themselves, aimed at increasing their power, and act and work toward achieving their goal through their internal and external resources, observing and reflecting on the impact of their actions (40) .…”

Opening the Black Box: Identifying Common Practice Approaches in Urban and Rural Rape Crisis Centers

“…Given the discrepancy between those endorsing empowerment as an orientation and those endorsing it as an intervention modality, empowerment seems to be operating more as a guiding framework and less as an operationalized intervention. This highlights important questions regarding how RCC counselors interpret and understand the outcomes of empowerment and what steps they take to implement “empowerment interventions.” Although efforts have been made to operationalize “empowerment” (i.e., Goodman et al, 2015; Gutierrez, Parsons, & Cox, 1998), there is still considerable variation in its use and application. To understand the interventions used in support of survivors and the extent to which those interventions are effectively meeting survivors’ needs, future work should explore how RCC counselors conceptualize and operationalize empowerment practice.…”