The Intimate Partner Violence Strategies Index

Abstract

Although research has documented the myriad ways that victims of IPV struggle to keep themselves safe, little research has gone the next step to investigate patterns in women's use of strategies, the factors that influence choice of strategies, or which strategies are most effective. One obstacle to conducting such research is the absence of an instrument to measure the nature and extent of battered women's strategic responses to violence across specific domains of strategies. This article describes the development of such an instrument, the Intimate Partner Violence Strategies Index, in the context of a longitudinal study of battered women's experience over time.

Mitigating intimate partner violence to promote safe linkage to care for South African women who test HIV positive during mobile counseling and testing.

“…Additionally, most studies assessing the helpfulness of a strategy did so using a likert scale and not a dichotomous item. Because these studies reported on mean scores for those scales, comparisons were incompatible (Parker & Gielen, 2014;Goodman et al, 2003). No information could be found from existing literature about whether or not other participants would recommend safety planning or certain strategies for friends.…”

“…Other studies found 69.1% talked with family, 74.5% talked with friends (Cooker as cited in Parker & Gielen, 2014) or 64% talked with a friend, and 49% talked with a family member (Glass et al, 2010). As mentioned above, this strategy has been shown to be particularly helpful (Goodman et al, 2003).…”

“…Conversely, of the many women who want to leave their abusive relationships, many are stymied by their lack of knowledge of community services to assist or by the actual insufficiency of IPV services in their community. A final perception among mental health professionals was the ideology that victims of abuse have a lack of survival skills; this idea diverges from the popularly held belief among IPV scholars that survivors are extremely resourceful and persistent in their attempts to protect themselves (Goodman et al, 2003). In summation, the authors of the above study discuss the need for more community-based services that are empowering (Gumani & Mudhovozi, 2013).…”

“…Parker & Gielen (2014) show participants, on average, report informal and formal networks (friends and family and medical and health professionals) are more helpful than strategies such as legal services. Concurring, Goodman, Dutton, Weinfurt & Cook, (2003) reveal the strategy of talking with family or a friend was experienced as particularly helpful in their study. This could explain the high level of those who found the safety plan to be helpful in the current study, as legal services were infrequently employed versus talking with family/friends, and medical and mental health professionals were most often employed.…”

“…The protocol also intentionally narrows its focus to strategies relevant to the HIV-IPV intersection and does not attempt to tackle general IPV, which would likely require a longer interview time, follow-up period and greater community involvement in order to impact greater change. In the Goodman et al (2003) study of the development of the IPV Strategy Index, interviews were also held over the phone but each one took an average of 45-60 minutes. Another study specifically on IPV safety planning, took about one hour to administer (Glass et al, 2010).…”