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Within intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual assault is often subsumed under the heading of physical abuse, but evidence suggests qualitative differences in outcomes when both types of abuse occur. This study explores the cumulative effect of sexual assault and physical abuse by a current or former intimate partner on helpseeking. Using a dataset of 1,072 IPV victims from 8 states, we found that women who had experienced sexual assault in addition to physical abuse (44%) used more help, but were also more likely to say that they did not seek help when they needed it. Among those who were aware of services, fear was the greatest obstacle to reaching out for help. Implications include the need for information on best practices in addressing the sequelae of both physical and sexual assault in victim service agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using four categories of accuracy (true positive, false positive, true negative, false negative), this study explored (1) how accurately intimate partner violence (IPV) victims are able to assess their risk of re-abuse; and (2) potential predictors of accuracy. Women seeking help for IPV ( N = 246) rated the likelihood that they would experience physical re-abuse in the coming year and then reported 18 months later whether those risks had been realized. Victim assessments were more likely to be right than wrong, and were subject to neither a pessimistic nor optimistic bias. In the multivariate analysis, significant/marginally significant predictors of the accuracy categories were the history of violence from this and former partners, level of substance use, PTSD symptoms, and the recency of the violence. Among the more robust findings were the connection between level of stalking and true positives, and between substance use and false negatives. This study suggests that victim assessments have significant potential to inform practice, and deserve further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated women's court experiences, mental health, and willingness to engage the system in the future for intimate partner violence (IPV), with a primary focus on the role of prior abusive relationships. Among 298 women whose partners were arrested for IPV, chi-square analyses found that women who had (vs. did not have) a prior abusive relationship were less likely to have contact with a court-based victim advocate, but there were no differences in the criminal order of protection level of restriction they requested. Regression analyses indicated that women with (vs. without) prior abusive relationships reported greater depression symptoms and perceived stress, and less willingness to engage the system in the future. No differences emerged in PTSD symptoms. This study provides insight into the experiences women have in the court system following their partner's arrest for IPV, considers their past abusive experiences, and has implications for women's safety and well-being.

State-sanctioned violence (SSV) has resounding effects on entire populations, and marginalized communities have long persisted in the work toward liberation despite continued SSV. This paper aims to bridge the gap between the vast scholarship on resilience and the practical challenge of sustaining and thriving in communities targeted by SSV. We use the theoretical frame of the Transconceptual Model of Empowerment and Resilience (TMER) to articulate the process of resilience and the resources that support it: maintenance, efficacy, skills, knowledge, and community resources. As a practical frame, we ground our application of the model in the experiences of the first two authors in their own communities. Centering examples from the Black Lives Matter movement and the CeCe McDonald Support Committee, we use our theoretical and practical frames to explore the scholarship on resilience relevant to resisting SSV, and we identify mechanisms for supporting community stakeholders' efforts to move toward liberation from SSV. We discuss implications for future research and activism, and we include a toolkit with suggested strategies as an appendix for psychologists, activists, and community stakeholders to consider as they work to facilitate community resilience and build a society free from SSV., (© 2022 The Authors. American Journal of Community Psychology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Community Research and Action.)

Consistent with a therapeutic jurisprudence framework, court decisions and processes can have a therapeutic or antitherapeutic effect on intimate partner violence (IPV) victims. To maximize therapeutic effects, IPV scholars have advocated for survivor-defined practices that emphasize the importance of engaging with victims in a collaborative manner that promotes autonomy, choice, and control. However, limited research exists in the context of criminal protection orders (POs). The current study addressed this gap by assessing whether criminal PO match (whether victims received the level PO they requested [i.e., PO match] or not [i.e., PO mismatch]) and victims' subjective experiences of the court process were associated with their willingness to use the system in the future to address IPV. In a sample of 187 women whose partners were arrested for IPV, experiencing the court processes as positive (β = .36, p = .001) and court-related fear (β = .41, p < .001) were positively associated with willingness to use the system in the future. Additionally, PO match moderated the association between subjective court experiences and willingness to use the system in the future. Experiencing the court processes as negative ( b = .33, p = .005) and validating ( b = -.36, p = .001) was associated with willingness to use the system in the future only for participants who did not receive the PO level they requested. While experiencing the court as positive ( b = -.40, p ≤ .001) was associated with willingness to use the system regardless of PO match, it was most strongly associated for participants who did not receive the PO level they requested. Results suggest the importance of ascertaining strategies to improve victims' experiences with the court, especially when victims' requests are not met, to increase future engagement with the system.

In the domestic violence field, a survivor-centered approach to services is a shared ideal, but there is little empirical work demonstrating its importance. This study filled that gap, focusing on a key outcome-safety-related empowerment. We gathered data from 177 intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors seeking community-based services, and after one session with an advocate, results revealed a significant change in two of three subscales of the Measure of Victim Empowerment Related to Safety (MOVERS) measure: Internal Tools and Expectations of Support. There was no change in Trade-Offs (pursuing safety causing new problems). More survivor-defined practice predicted greater changes in empowerment, over and above severity of violence, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and demographics.

Scholarship has documented the challenges that face college students of marginalized economic backgrounds, an issue that is relevant for Community Psychology because of the field's commitment to social justice. Community psychologists are concerned with facilitating access to social resources such as education across the full range of social identities. The current study builds on recent research that has identified the key role of classism in students' struggles. We developed a new measure of college student financial stress in order to investigate the relationship between indices of social class (financial stress, subjective social status, and parental education) and indices of classism (institutional, interpersonal, and citational). We also explored whether race or immigration status moderated these relationships in a sample of diverse students (N = 278). Findings show that students' current financial stress has the strongest relationship with classism, and immigration status moderates the exposure to citational classism. Specifically, we found evidence for perpetuation of classism among U.S. born students higher on the social class ladder. Implications for future research include the importance of considering multiple domains of social class, studying social class in a context-specific way, and differentiating dimensions of classism. Findings also suggest that financial stress is an important focus in the work to support marginalized students, and that classist narratives need to be addressed among students of higher social class., (© 2019 Society for Community Research and Action.)

Poverty is a widespread social problem that affects a substantial number of Americans each year. Attitudes can affect a range of judgments, behavioral intentions, and actions related to addressing this problem. However, existing tools that measure attitudes toward those in poverty do not fully capture the deficit ideology that is a critical component of beliefs about social class. We developed the Systems and Individual Responsibility for Poverty (SIRP) Scale to address this gap. This article describes the development of an initial pool of 20 items, and then the refinement and validation of the final 17-item measure. Exploratory factor analysis (N = 260) and confirmatory factor analysis (N = 280) yielded 2 factors: Individual Responsibility and Systems Responsibility. The Individual Responsibility factor comprises two subscales, differentiating between reasons for getting into and not getting out of poverty. The SIRP is a new tool for evaluating community psychologists' efforts to shift deficit-oriented thinking about poverty, and is likely to be particularly useful in education contexts. In future work, community psychologists might adapt the measure to assess deficit oriented thinking about other problems, and to explore how such attitudes are related to behavior., (© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Many women with children experience intimate partner violence (IPV). These survivors are particularly important to assist, because countless have complex safety concerns related to their children. Mothers' concerns about their children have been shown to impact their decision making related to abuse, but researchers have not closely explored what happens during mothers' interactions with help sources. This study examined whether women with (n = 98) and without (n = 44) children differ in a) their court experiences through their perceptions of procedural and distributive justice, and b) the context of their lives surrounding the court experience. We also explored the relationship between contextual factors and procedural and distributive justice. Results indicate participants were relatively satisfied with their court experiences, despite experiencing reabuse, danger, and fear throughout court processes. Mothers reported significantly higher levels of distributive justice and contact with the abusive partner than non-mothers. However, mothers did not differ significantly from non-mothers with regard to procedural justice, fear, danger, reabuse or reliance on the abusive partner. Results of multiple regression analyses indicated the interaction between fear and motherhood significantly predicted participants' perceptions of distributive justice, as did the interaction between danger and motherhood. In these interactions, mothers' fear and perceptions of danger were not related to their perception of distributive justice. However, non-mothers who reported higher levels of fear and danger perceived less distributive justice. Results suggest mothers and non-mothers enter the system with similar life contexts, and that these contextual factors impact their perceptions of court outcomes differently.

Sexual assault is a widespread problem on college campuses that has been the subject of substantial attention in recent years (Ali, 2011; Krebs, Lindquist, Berzofsky, Shook-Sa, & Peterson, 2016). Resources designed to address the problem exist, but there is evidence that they are underutilized by survivors (Campbell, 2008). The current study used grounded theory to explore how sexual assault survivors make decisions about helpseeking. In-depth interviews were conducted with 14 college sexual assault survivors to develop a theoretical model for their decision-making process. The resulting model, Deciding Where to Turn, suggests that survivors engage in three key decision points: determining if there is a problem related to the sexual assault (Do I Need Help), considering options (What Can I Do), and weighing the consequences of these options (What Will I Do). This process results in one of four behavioral choices: cope on one's own, seek support from friends/family, seek support from formal resources, or covert helpseeking, where needs are met without disclosure. Deciding Where to Turn contributes to the literature by providing a framework for understanding helpseeking decisions after sexual assault, highlighting the need to match reactions to survivor perceptions. The concept of covert helpseeking in particular adds to the way researchers and practitioners think about helpseeking. Research and practice implications are discussed., (© Society for Community Research and Action 2017.)

The Transconceptual Model of Empowerment and Resilience (American Journal of Community Psychology, 52, 2013, 333) suggests that a set of resilience and empowerment resources fuel both initial and sustained participation in collective action. Using the case study of a prodemocracy movement in Hong Kong, the present study focused on the subset of those resources that are relevant in ongoing collective action: efficacy, skills, and maintenance. As individuals possess varying combinations of these resources, the present study utilized latent profile analysis to test how patterns of empowerment and resilience resources influence initial and long-term collective action. Five groups were identified: (a) Uncommitted/Uninspired; (b) Committed to Status Quo; (c) Mainstream Populist; (d) Empowered; and (e) Ambivalent. ANOVA and ANCOVA analyses found that there are significant group differences in initial and long-term participation. Groups with higher level of resources reported greater levels of initial participation than their counterparts; however, high resource groups did not uniformly report greater levels of intention to participate in future collective action. Of the maintenance processes tested, collective identity emerged as a particularly important predictor differentiating initial and sustained participation. Findings from the present study raise questions about how individuals with multiple identities can come together and participate in collective action., (© Society for Community Research and Action 2017.)

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive and devastating social problem that is estimated to occur in one of every four opposite-sex relationships and at least one of every five same-sex romantic relationships. These estimates may not represent violence against those who identify as transgender or genderqueer, and very little comprehensive research has been conducted on IPV within these populations. One statewide study on IPV found rates of IPV were as high as one of every two transgender individuals. In order to cope with the effects of abuse or leave an abusive partner, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and genderqueer (LGBTQ) IPV survivors seek support from others. However, LGBTQ IPV survivors may experience unique difficulties related to their sexual orientation and gender identity when seeking assistance. This article reviews the literature on LGBTQ IPV and suggests three major barriers to help-seeking exist for LGBTQ IPV survivors: a limited understanding of the problem of LGBTQ IPV, stigma, and systemic inequities. The significance and consequences of each barrier are discussed, and suggestions for future research, policy, and practice are provided., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Protection orders (POs) are a widely recommended and commonly used intervention for intimate partner violence (IPV), but evidence for their effectiveness is mixed. This mixed methods study used the framework of empowerment to explore the goals of petitioners who seek POs, and the extent to which one group of experts considers these goals to be a good fit with the court's intent. We collected data in three phases: (a) We conducted a qualitative study to generate a list of goals (n = 10); (b) we administered the list to a sample of IPV survivors (n = 157); and (c) we surveyed a group of attorneys (n = 10). Results showed that petitioners endorse many goals for seeking POs and that while their highest priority goals relate to safety, other nearly universally endorsed goals are more psychological in nature, such as moving on with one's life. Petitioners also use the orders to navigate complex relationships, helping themselves to set boundaries in addition to sending a clear message to respondents. Our group of lawyers viewed petitioners' highest priority goals as a relatively good fit with the system, but was fairly pessimistic about the likelihood of success. Petitioners' ratings of progress toward their goals, at the time of the PO hearing, differed markedly from lawyers' perceptions. Implications for research and practice are discussed., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Survivor-defined practice, characterized by an emphasis on client choice, partnership, and sensitivity to the unique needs, contexts, and coping strategies of individual survivors, is an aspirational goal of the domestic violence (DV) movement, assumed to be a key contributor to empowerment and other positive outcomes among survivors. Despite its central role in DV program philosophy, training, and practice, however, our ability to assess its presence and its presumed link to well-being has been hampered by the absence of a way to measure it from survivors' perspectives. As part of a larger university-community collaboration, this study had two aims: (a) to develop a measure of survivor-defined practice from the perspective of participants, and (b) to assess its relationship to safety-related empowerment after controlling for other contributors to survivor well-being (e.g., financial stability and social support). Results supported the reliability and validity of the Survivor-Defined Practice Scale (SDPS), a nine-item measure that assesses participants' perception of the degree to which their advocates help them achieve goals they set for themselves, facilitate a spirit of partnership, and show sensitivity to their individual needs and styles. The items combined to form one factor indicating that the three theoretical aspects of survivor-defined practice may be different manifestations of one underlying construct. Results also support the hypothesized link between survivor-defined practice and safety-related empowerment. The SDPS offers DV programs a mechanism for process evaluation that is rigorous and rooted in the feminist empowerment philosophy that so many programs espouse., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Using a longitudinal dataset of 142 victims of intimate partner violence seeking help from the criminal justice system, this study explored the relationship between victims' perceptions of procedural and distributive justice and their mental health and intention to use the system again. Controlling for reabuse and victims' mental health at baseline, victims who perceived higher levels of procedural justice experienced higher levels of quality of life, lower levels of depression, and higher levels of intention to use the court system again at 3 and 6 months after intake, regardless of case disposition. Subjective distributive justice moderated the relationship between procedural justice and quality of life and likelihood of future help-seeking at 6 months after intake, such that higher perceptions of procedural and subjective distributive justice predicted higher quality of life and likelihood of future help-seeking. Objective distributive justice (whether any consequences resulted from the criminal case and victims received what they requested in a civil protection order) did not relate to victims' mental health, intention to use the system again, or procedural and subjective distributive justice. Results suggest fair court processes may help victims by positively affecting their mental health and increasing their intention to use the justice system again.

Resilience and empowerment are widely employed concepts in community psychology and other social sciences. Although empowerment is more closely associated with community psychology, both concepts hone to community psychology's strengths-based values, recognizing, respecting, and promoting local capacity and positive outcomes. Both concepts also have been critiqued for lacking clear consensus regarding definition, operationalization, and measurement (Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, 2010; Luthar et al. in Child Dev 71(3):543-562, 2000). This deficiency is reflected in the wide ranging applications of each term independently, and is particularly concerning when the terms are used together or interchangeably. Theoretical work on these concepts' boundaries and interaction is lacking. This paper builds on the authors' prior work operationalizing the processes and outcomes of each concept (Brodsky et al. in Am J Community Psychol 47(3-4):217-235, 2011; Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, 2010; Cattaneo and Goodman in Psychol Violence, in press) to present a combined transconceptual model illuminating the divergence, convergence, and interactions between the two. Both resilience and empowerment are fueled by unsatisfying states, but are differentiated by, among other things, internally (resilience) versus externally (empowerment) focused change goals. Goal determinants include context, power differentials, and other risks and resources. These concepts have the potential to facilitate each other, and understanding their interaction can better inform community psychologists' work with marginalized populations.

The court system is a central part of the societal response to intimate partner violence (IPV), and is a frequently used source of help for victims. The concept of therapeutic jurisprudence suggests that the court should be evaluated not just for its potential effect on recidivism, but for its impact on the well-being of all those who participate in it, and IPV scholars suggest that empowerment is a key component of any therapeutic intervention for victims. Research in these areas is limited by the lack of a standard method for examining victim experience in the court system. This article describes the development and piloting of a 23-item measure designed to address this gap. The pilot sample included 157 victims of IPV seeking civil protection orders (CPOs). Exploratory factor analysis yielded 5 factors: Negative Impact, Positive Impact, Fear, Validation, and Network Impact. Validation was most strongly correlated with global satisfaction with the court process. Implications and applications for work in therapeutic jurisprudence and empowerment are discussed.

In intimate partner violence (IPV) risk assessment, there is consensus that a large gap exists between research and practice. This exploratory study interviewed 13 practitioners working with IPV victims to generate ideas about the nature of this gap, and found that only two conducted standardized risk assessment. Others felt imposing structure might detract from the quality of their work. Results support the need for different techniques in different contexts; some adjust only speed of services according to their risk perception, whereas others use in-depth information to customize services. Perspectives appear particularly disparate regarding victim minimization of risk. Implications for future work are discussed.

In this article, we propose a model of the process of empowerment. The notion of empowerment is compelling and much employed across many subfields inside and outside of psychology, but the lack of consistency in the ways prior literature has defined it is an obstacle to meaningful synthesis of findings and consistent application in practice. Our empowerment process model builds on prior work in taking the following steps: articulating empowerment as an iterative process, identifying core elements of that process, and defining the process in a way that is practically useful to both researchers and practitioners with terms that are easily communicated and applied. The components of the model are personally meaningful and power-oriented goals, self-efficacy, knowledge, competence, action, and impact. Individuals move through the process with respect to particular goals, doubling back repeatedly as experience promotes reflection. We make specific recommendations for research and practice and discuss applications to social justice., ((c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

Using a national dataset of 820 women who had called the police for an incident of intimate partner violence, this study explored the relationship between several components of socioeconomic status (education, income, and employment), race, and the nature of interactions with police. Over and above the effects of control variables (the presence of an advocate on the scene, the severity of violence in the relationship, and prior calls to police), victims with higher education reported less positive interactions, less control during the interactions, and lower effectiveness of police. Race did not moderate these relationships, and the other components of socioeconomic status were not significantly related to any of the outcomes. Exploratory tests of mediation found that the relationship between education and the quality of interactions with police was explained by the fact that more educated victims felt they had less control in these incidents and were less likely to see the offender arrested. Results also provide evidence for the positive impact of advocates on interactions with police. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

Research has established the connection between intimate partner violence victims' empowering experiences in the court system and their satisfaction with the process, but not between these experiences and victims' broader wellbeing, a link suggested by the framework of therapeutic jurisprudence. This study investigated the relationship between empowerment and victim depression, quality of life, fear, and intention to use the system in the future among 142 court-involved women. At 3 and 6 months after recruitment, over and above repeat abuse, the outcome of the criminal case, and expectations about the court system, more empowering experiences in the court predicted improvement in depression and quality of life, in addition to stronger intention to use the system in the future if needed. Implications include the need for research on what aspects of victim experience in the court are empowering and evaluations of innovations that can increase the likelihood they will occur.

The Victim-Informed Prosecution Project (VIP) was designed to amplify the voice of the victim in the prosecution of a battering current or ex-partner through collaboration between the prosecution and victim-centered agencies. This article describes the rationale for and design and implementation of VIP and then explores whether it increased perceived voice. While some VIP services (advocacy and civil protection order representation) were associated with increased perceived voice, the program as a whole was associated with it only in the context of greater contact with prosecutors, when cases were more likely to be felonies. We make specific recommendations for applying this model.

The role of socioeconomic status (SES) in the prevalence and course of intimate partner violence (IPV) has been established, but mechanisms of this role are less clear. An untested assumption has been that women of greater resources are better able to seek help. This study used a national sample of 1,077 women who had experienced IPV to explore the role of income and education in helpseeking from hotlines, shelters, and police. The authors found that SES did not play a large role in the use of hotlines, the least often used service in this study. Women with more income were less likely to use shelters and were less likely to feel they should have used them. There was an interaction between income and severity of violence in predicting police use, such that severity of violence only predicted calling police among higher income women. This finding suggests the possibility of a lower threshold for reporting violence among the lowest income women. The authors discuss the need for research using a more diverse sample of women, and the need to fine tune services according to our emerging understanding of social context., (PsycINFO Database Record 2009 APA.)

Current theory assumes that intimate partner violence (IPV) victims' helpseeking is a process that unfolds over time rather than a one-time event, but this assumption has never been explored with longitudinal data. This study describes the pattern of formal helpseeking efforts in a sample of 406 IPV victims over the course of a year. Further, we explore the relationship between legal and extralegal helpseeking, reflecting current controversy over how these two types of interventions should be coordinated. We constructed and tested latent growth curve models using structural equation modeling to explore helpseeking patterns, and found that repeated helpseeking was common, with 80% seeking additional help during follow-up. Results also showed that legal and extralegal helpseeking decreased together over time, and that this similarity in pattern can best be described as a connection between behaviors that are similarly influenced by time-specific events like re-abuse, rather than a connection between overarching trajectories. Results suggest that time varying factors are more important than stable characteristics in predicting helpseeking patterns, and support coordination through a one-stop-shopping model rather than primarily through referral systems., (((c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved).)

The identification of factors that contribute to reabuse in cases of intimate partner violence is a critical research aim in a variety of disciplines. Such information would have relevance in many contexts where systems or professionals struggle to intervene in such cases, especially in the context of limited resources. This article crosses disciplines to take stock of this body of literature and provide a road map for future research. We include literature in the areas of batterer treatment effectiveness, the effectiveness of criminal and civil court remedies, the evaluation of victim services, and the course of violent relationships over time absent any intervention. We describe the key dimensions along which these studies vary and detail the range of predictors examined by the studies, identifying the most consistent findings. Finally, we make recommendations concerning the methodology and content of future studies.