Women's Reproductive Coercion and Pregnancy Avoidance: Associations With Homicide Risk, Sexual Violence, and Religious Abuse.

This survey study explores patterns of reproductive coercion (RC) and pregnancy avoidance (PA) among women recruited from domestic violence shelters in the southwestern United States (N = 661). Two logistic regression models assessed the demographic, relationships, and violence characteristics associated with RC and PA. Younger, African American, and Hispanic women were more likely to experience RC. Homicide risk, sexual intimate partner violence (IPV), and religious abuse were associated with RC, and RC and homicide risk were associated with PA. We discuss implications of the associations between RC and PA and their links to religious abuse, sexual IPV, and homicide risk.

Patterns and Usefulness of Safety Behaviors Among Community-Based Women Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence.

Women who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) use a variety of safety strategies to reduce the frequency and severity of violence, including both informal and formal help-seeking. The purpose of this study was to identifying patterns of engagement in safety behaviors by U.S. women from outside of formal service settings, examine which factors are associated with different patterns of use, and examine the perceived usefulness of safety strategies among women who used them. Cross-sectional data from 725 women experiencing IPV were used for these analyses. A cluster analysis revealed three clusters of safety behavior use among the IPV survivors: Exploring Safety Options, Avoiding the Justice System, and Trying Everything. The trying everything cluster had high rates of use across all of the safety behaviors; they also reported the highest levels of physical, sexual, and psychological IPV. The exploring safety options cluster used the fewest safety behaviors and had the lowest level of IPV. Higher violence was related to a higher likelihood of finding safety planning helpful and a lower likelihood of finding leaving home helpful. Women who were currently living with their partner were less likely to find talking with a professional, making a safety plan, or leaving home helpful. Higher decisional conflict-uncertainty about what safety decisions would be best-was almost universally related to greater likelihood of not finding safety behaviors helpful. The study findings reinforce the importance of working with survivors to tailor safety plans with strategies that reflect their situation, and provide insights into for which tailoring of resource recommendations may be made.

The Girl Is Mine: Reframing Intimate Partner Violence and Sex Work as Intersectional Spaces of Gender-Based Violence.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and sex work have been primarily constructed as mutually exclusive phenomena within scholarly literature, though both can be situated under the umbrella of gender-based violence and traced to male sexual proprietariness. Specialized research has resulted in deeper understanding of nuanced categorizations of sub-phenomena within both IPV and sex work, with parallel constructions along a spectrum of increasing danger. However, the scholarly construction of these continua as parallel-and thus unrelated-disguises the systemic nature of each form of violence and potentially pits victims against each other in the struggle for legitimacy. We propose a more systemic approach to understanding and researching IPV and sex work and provide examples of research already moving in this direction.

Experiences of Online Harassment Among Emerging Adults: Emotional Reactions and the Mediating Role of Fear.

Online harassment is a growing problem. Among college students, 43% report some experience receiving harassing messages. Previous research has shown negative online experiences to be typical among "emerging adults" (especially college students), and these incidents may be related to normative developmental behaviors, such as "on-again-off-again" romantic relationships. Study hypotheses were derived from previous research. Undergraduate student respondents ( N = 342) were surveyed about their experiences with online harassment, emotional responses to online harassment, and their relationship with the sender of harassing messages. Findings suggest that online harassment is linked to issues of intimate partner violence. Those who were harassed by a partner reported feelings of depression and anxiety. Using a gendered framework to explore online harassment is warranted because young women who are 18 to 29 years of age have higher rates of intimate partner violence than other demographic groups. Findings suggest future research is needed to understand the time ordering of these issues.

The State of Intimate Partner Violence Intervention: Progress and Continuing Challenges.

Over the past 40 years, intimate partner violence (IPV) has evolved from an emerging social problem to a socially unacceptable crime. The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 encourages state policies that focus on criminal justice intervention, including mandatory arrest and prosecution. Services offered to victim-survivors of IPV are often tied to criminal justice intervention, or otherwise encourage separation. These interventions have been seen as effectively using the authority of the state to enhance women's power relative to that of abusive men. However, these interventions do not serve the needs of women who, for cultural or personal reasons, want to remain in their relationship, or marginalized women who fear the power of the state due to institutionalized violence, heterosexism, and racism. The one-size-fits-all approach that encourages prosecution and batterer intervention programs for offenders and shelter and advocacy for victim-survivors fails to adhere to the social work value of client self-determination and the practice principle of meeting clients where they are. It is imperative that social workers in all areas of practice are aware of IPV policies, services, and laws. Social workers' challenge moving forward is to develop innovative and evidence-based interventions that serve all victim-survivors of IPV

The accumulation of multiple sources of psychosocial disadvantage and their correlation to reported overall health: establishing a threshold.

Psychosocial disadvantage and lower socioeconomic status are associated with increased risk of poor health. The purposes of this study are to identify a threshold at which cumulative psychosocial risk factors become significantly associated with a decrease in health status and to examine whether women are at higher risk than men. Using secondary cross-sectional data, a correlation of self-reported health rating and psychosocial risk factors was conducted. Participant characteristics by number of health-related psychosocial risks were constructed. The accumulation of risk factors had a negative effect on health status at the threshold of two; health status significantly decreased with the addition of each risk factor. Gender significantly moderated the relationship between number of risks and self-reported health status, with women's health decreasing as the number of risks increased. Risk factors in this study are typically part of client assessments and can be used in assisting social workers to identify those most at risk. Those with two or more risk factors are significantly more at risk for poorer health. Moreover, women and ethnic minorities were at more risk for poor health with the addition ofjust one risk factor.

Factors related to sexual abuse and forced sex in a sample of women experiencing police-involved intimate partner violence.

Intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV) is a significant social problem, particularly among women who are concurrently experiencing physical violence in their intimate relationships. This research examined the prevalence and factors associated with IPSV among a sample of women recruited at the scene of police-involved intimate partner violence incidents (N = 432). Within this sample, 43.98 percent of participants reported experiencing IPSV; this includes 17.36 percent who reported sexual abuse and 26.62 percent who reported forced sex. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine the factors related to sexual abuse and forced sex, controlling for victim and relationship characteristics. Compared with women not reporting IPSV, women who were sexually abused or forced into sexual intercourse were significantly more likely to experience strangulation, feelings of shame, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Women whose partners had forced sex were more likely to report that they had a child in common with their abusive partner; and that their partner was sexually jealous, had threatened to kill them, had stalked or harassed them, or caused them to have a miscarriage due to abuse. These findings can be used to better inform social work practitioners about the prevalence and nature of IPSV and the associated risk factors, and can assist in routine screening and intervention.

The average predictive validity of intimate partner violence risk assessment instruments.

The field of intimate partner violence (IPV) risk assessment (predicting recidivism, lethality) is fast growing, and the majority of research examining the predictive validity of IPV risk assessment instruments has been conducted in the past decade. This study examines the average predictive validity weighted by sample size of five stand alone IPV risk assessment instruments that have been validated in multiple research studies using the Receiver Operating Characteristic Area Under the Curve (AUC). The Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) has the highest average weighted AUC (=.666, k=5) followed, in order of most to least predictive, by the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment (SARA; AUC=.628, k=6), the Danger Assessment (DA; AUC=.618, k=4), the Domestic Violence Screening Inventory (DVSI; AUC=.582, k=3), and the Kingston Screening Instrument for Domestic Violence (K-SID; AUC=.537, k=2). The effect size for the average AUCs for IPV risk assessment instruments is small, with the exception of a medium effect size for the ODARA. Of the 20 measures of predictive validity included in this analysis, the risk assessment was administered correctly in nine (45%). IPV risk assessment is relatively new, and the use of proxy instruments and utilization of risk assessment instruments in settings for which they were not created is widespread. While waiting for a more rigorous body of research, factors in addition to predictive validity must be taken into consideration (e.g., setting, outcome, skills of the assessor, access to information) when choosing which risk assessment instrument is appropriate for use in a particular practice setting.