DCSIMG
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs; National Institute of Justice The Research, Development, and Evaluation Agency of the U.S. Department of Justice U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice ProgramsNational Institute of JusticeThe Research, Development, and Evaluation Agency of the U.S. Department of Justice

Research Recommendations from the Expert Roundtable "Batterer Intervention: Doing the Work and Measuring the Progress"

Contradictory research results have created confusion among professionals who work in fields related to domestic violence and criminal justice. To explore how the systems that work with perpetrators of domestic violence could be improved and how research could be more helpful to the field, the Family Violence Prevention Fund and NIJ co-sponsored a meeting on batterer intervention programs (BIPs) and domestic violence research and practice in December 2009.

Following are that groups' recommendations related to research. [1]

Policy and Practice Recommendations [2]
Topic Short-term Long-term
Stopping the abuse
  • Learn more about what stops men from battering and build those incentives into BIPs.
  • Study men who have changed inside BIPs and outside.
  • Expand violence beyond the legal definitions.
  • Determine key components of successful social change work.
  • Develop promising-practices models of community engagement to reduce domestic violence.
  • Conduct longitudinal study of change process in men.
  • Study resource allocation and cost effectiveness.
Testing BIP effectiveness
  • Compare BIPs that work alone with those who partner with other orgs, esp. those with court oversight.
  • Need current data on BIP effectiveness.
  • Study context of BIPs and effect on outcomes.
  • Embed researchers in BIPs to improve research goals and designs.
  • Develop 2-3 common outcomes all BIPs can measure to build evaluation data across programs.
  • Study experiences in BIPs of men by ethnic group.
  • Do no harm.
  • Include broader BIP purposes and activities in evals.
  • Implement systemic and cultural reform of BIPs.
  • Determine what constitutes best practices.
  • Use consensus process to design a fair test of BIPs.
  • Study why battered women thank BIPs.
  • Conduct multi-site initiative with implementation of model BIP, common principles, and evaluator at each site.
  • Build more current data about BIP effectiveness and shape messages about BIPs based on those data.
  • Look at where psychological research and BIP research overlap and what can be learned at the intersection.
  • Study long-term (10-20 years) effects of BIPs.
  • Study BIPs for women who are abusive.
Assessing safety and well being of women and children
  • Study how criminal justice system interventions affect women's decisions.
  • Study how women and children change when men participate in BIPs.
  • Study effects of domestic violence on children.
  • Develop indicators of family health in context of domestic violence.
  • Study pregnancy and risks of abuse.
  • Stop the cycle of violence.
  • Study efforts to reduce sexism.
Integrating BIPs with other programs  
  • Study how best to integrate BIPs with other programs.
Understanding court responses
  • Learn what courts do with noncompliance.
  • Provide more consistent reports from BIPs to courts.
  • Develop quantitative measures to give "performance feedback" on individual men who batter to courts and others.
  • Study court attitudes towards men who batter and BIPs.
  • Develop strategies for courts to support BIP effectiveness.
  • Study effectiveness of newer domestic violence codes, enhanced sanctions, and presumptive custody laws.
Implementing prevention and early intervention programs
  • Study how best to engage men in broad change process.
  • Study results of community education programs.
  • Study efficacy of early intervention with expectant and new fathers.
  • Study how to identify men who batter before they move from verbal to physical abuse.
  • Study how to prevent battering behavior.
  • Study role of peers and micro and macro communities in ending violence against women.
  • Disseminate domestic violence research findings to schools and courts.
  • Develop school programs on healthy relationships.

Notes

[1] This table is taken from Batterer Intervention: Doing the Work and Measuring the Progress (pdf, 22 pages) Exit Notice, a report on the December 2009 Experts Roundtable prepared by Lucy Salcido Carter.

[2] These are participants' comments and do not constitute a cohesive body of information. Due to space limitations, participants' comments from these discussions have been shortened and paraphrased.

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Date Created: January 04, 2011