The purpose of this research was to improve understanding of the conditions under which criminal sanctions do and do not reduce repeat violence between intimate partners. This study involved repeated reading and close inspection of four documents in order to compare and contrast the multivariate analyses reported by John Wooldredge and Amy Thistlethwaite (RECONSIDERING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RECIDIVISM: INDIVIDUAL AND CONTEXTUAL EFFECTS OF COURT DISPOSITIONS AND STAKE IN CONFORMITY IN HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO, 1993-1998 [ICPSR 3013]). The first part of this study's design involved the detailed literature review of four Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite publications between the years 1999 and 2005. The second element of the study's design required researchers to gain a detailed understanding of the archived data using the documentation provided by Wooldredge. The third element of the study's secondary analysis research design involved using the identified variables to reproduce the multivariate empirical findings about the effects of sanctions, stakes, and social context on repeat offending. These findings were presented in a series of tables in the four Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite publications. After numerous iterations of reading reports and documentation and exploring alternative measures and methods, researchers produced a report detailing their ability to reproduce Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite's descriptive measures. This study's design called for using explicit criteria for determining the extent to which Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite's findings could be reproduced. Researchers developed and applied three criteria for making that determination. The first was a simple comparison of the regression coefficients and standard errors. The second criterion was a determination of whether the reproduced results conformed to the direction and statistical significance levels of the original analyses. The third criterion was to apply a statistical test to assess the significance of any differences in the sizes of the original and the reproduced coefficients. The data archived by Wooldredge provided seven dichotomous measures of criminal sanctions (no charges filed, dismissed, acquitted, a treatment program, probation only, jail only, and a combination of probation and jail). Part of the design of this study was to go beyond reproducing Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite's approaches and to reformulate the available measures of criminal sanctions to more directly test the prosecution, conviction, and sentence severity hypotheses. The researchers produced these tests by constructing three new measures of criminal sanctions (prosecution, conviction, and sanction severity) and testing each of them in separate multivariate models. The Part 1 (Hamilton County, Ohio, Census Tract Data) data file contains 206 cases and 35 variables. The Part 2 (Neighborhood Data) data file contains 47 cases and 12 variables. The variables in Part 1 (Hamilton County, Ohio, Census Tract Data) include a census tract indicator, median household income of tract, several proportions such as number of college graduates in the tract and corresponding Z-scores, a regression factor score for analysis 1, a socio-economic factor, a census tract number for the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a Cincinnati neighborhoods indicator. Variables in Part 2 (Neighborhood Data) include a neighborhood indicator, average age in the neighborhood, demographic proportions such as proportion male in the neighborhood and proportion of college graduates in the neighborhood, and a social class factor.

The Metro-Dade project replicated an earlier study of domestic violence, the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (SPECIFIC DETERRENT EFFECTS OF ARREST FOR DOMESTIC ASSAULT: MINNEAPOLIS, 1981-1982 [ICPSR 8250]), which was conducted by the Police Foundation with a grant from the National Institute of Justice. The Metro-Dade study employed a research design that tested the relative effectiveness of various combinations of treatments that were randomly assigned in two stages. Initially, eligible spouse battery cases were assigned to either an arrest or a nonarrest condition. Later, cases were assigned either to receive or not to receive a follow-up investigation and victim counseling from a detective working with the Safe Streets Unit (SSU), a unit that deals specifically with domestic violence. Given the various treatment conditions employed, three types of dependent variables were examined: (1) prevalence--the proportion of suspects who engaged in repeat incidents, (2) incidence--the frequency with which repeat incidents occurred, and (3) "time to failure"--the interval between the presenting incident and subsequent incidents. Initial interviews were conducted with victims soon after the presenting incident, and follow-up interviews were attempted six months later. The interviews were conducted in either English or Spanish. The interview questions requested detailed background information about the suspect, victim, and any family members living with the victim at the time of the interview, including age, gender, and marital and employment status. Parallel sets of employment and education questions were asked about the victim and the suspect. Additionally, the interview questionnaire was designed to collect information on (1) the history of the victim's relationship with the suspect, (2) the nature of the presenting incident, including physical violence, property damage, and threats, (3) causes of the presenting incident, including the use of alcohol and drugs by both the victim and the offender, (4) actions taken by the police when they arrived on the scene, (5) the victim's evaluation of the services rendered by the police on the scene, (6) the nature of the follow-up contact by a detective from the Safe Street Unit and an evaluation of the services provided, (7) the victim's history of abuse by the offender, and (8) the nature of subsequent abuse since the presenting incident. Data for Parts 1 and 2 are self-reported data, obtained from interviews with victims. Part 4 consists of data recorded on Domestic Violence Continuation Report forms, indicating subsequent assaults or domestic disputes, and Part 5 contains criminal history data on suspects from arrest reports, indicating a subsequent arrest. The police report of the incident and information on the type of randomized treatment assigned to each case is given in Part 6.

The current study was a national evaluation that examined the effects of implementing The Greenbook recommendations on collaboration, systems change, and practice within and across the three primary systems of child welfare agencies, courts, and domestic violence service providers. The national evaluation utilized data collected through stakeholder surveys, direct service worker surveys, child welfare case file reviews, and site visit interviews between 2001 and 2006. The purpose of the national evaluation was to develop and implement a strategy for gaining a formative understanding of sites' planning and implementation processes and a summative assessment of the impact of such work on communities, systems, and families. Part 1 (Stakeholder Survey Data) includes variables on the respondent's level of involvement in the organization and barriers to implementing Greenbook initiatives. The baseline stakeholder survey was conducted in 2002 with a total of 86 respondents across sites, and follow-up data were collected three years later (2005) with a total of 62 respondents. Part 2 through Part 7 (Direct Service Worker, and Supervisor Data) include variables on the respondents' race, gender, and length of time at the child welfare agency, court, or domestic violence service provider. Respondents are asked about the hours of training received over the past year, the presence of written reporting guidelines, screening tools, and working relationships with the other agency types. The baseline direct service worker survey was conducted after the end of the demonstration planning period (2003) with a total of 275 respondents across sites, and follow-up data were collected two years later (2005) with a total of 224 respondents. Part 8 (Case Abstractions Data) includes variables on substantiated cases of child maltreatment, risk factors contributing to maltreatment attributed to the mother, the father, or other caregiver, documentation of domestic violence and services provided to the victims and perpetrators. A random sample of substantiated cases of child maltreatment was reviewed in each site at the beginning of the demonstration initiative (2001) with a total of 616 case files reviewed across sites, after the end of the planning period (2003) with a total of 642 case files reviewed across sites, and toward the end of the implementation period (2005) with a total of 562 case files reviewed across sites. Part 9 (Site Visit Interview Notes Qualitative Data) includes questions on structure of services, policies and procedures, training, and the strengths and needs of the site. Site visits were conducted between January 2001 and June 2006 with interviewers with at least one collaborative member from each of the three primary systems (child welfare agency, courts, domestic violence service provider).

The purposes of this study were (1) to examine factors associated with New York City Family Courts' visitation decisions and conformity to the provisions of the Model Code of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges when there was a history of abuse of the mother by the father, (2) to compare the different visitation conditions in regard to reabuse -- both psychological and physical, and (3) to examine children's psychological well-being as measured by maternal report on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), given their exposure to abuse. Two hundred forty-two participants were recruited from the Family Courts and supervised visitation centers in the five counties in New York City. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. There were two interviews with the mother, with an average interval of six months between interviews. Baseline interviews were conducted in person, at the court, or visitation center from 2002 to 2004. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 168 of the participants from 2003 to 2005 and were conducted over the phone, except on the rare occasions when a participant requested an in-person interview. Information in the the baseline interview included demographic information on the participant as well as on the father of the child(ren), information on the level of physical violence and the children's exposure, how often particular acts of violence took place, threats and coercion, an injury index, information regarding court orders, information regarding custody petitions, information regarding visitation orders, and visitation experience. The follow-up interview asked about abuse since the previous interview and included updates, changes, and modifications to the information provided in the baseline interview.

In the mid-1980s New York City officials developed an intervention program, the Domestic Violence Intervention Education Project (DVIEP), to reduce repeat incidents of family abuse. The program posited that repeat victimization would decline as victims extracted themselves from self-defeating relationships or by working with social services and criminal justice staff to develop strategies to end the abuse while staying in the relationship. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the DVIEP model in reducing repeat instances of family violence. Between 1987 and 1997, three separate, randomized field experiments in New York City's public housing projects evaluated whether or not the DVIEP program reduced the rate of subsequent victimization. All three studies tested the same intervention model: persons who reported family violence to the police were randomly assigned to receive or not to receive a follow-up visit from a domestic violence prevention police officer and a social worker. For this study, researchers concatenated the micro data from the 3 experiments into a single, 1,037 case dataset that contains identical treatment and control measures, and nearly identical outcome measures. Of the 1,037 total cases in the study, 434 are from the 1987 Domestic Violence Study, 406 are from the Elder Abuse study, EFFECTIVENESS OF A JOINT POLICE AND SOCIAL SERVICES RESPONSE TO ELDER ABUSE IN MANHATTAN [NEW YORK CITY], NEW YORK, 1996-1997 (ICPSR 3130), and 197 are from the Domestic Violence Arrestee Study in Manhattan's Police Services Area 2 (PSA2). The resulting data collection contains a total of 31 variables including which study (1987 Domestic Violence Study, Elder Abuse Study, or Domestic Violence Arrestee Study) the respondent participated in, whether the respondent was part of the experimental group or the control group, whether the respondent received public education or a home visit by a DVIEP team, the number of DVIEP services the respondent used, and whether the respondent completed a final interview with a DVIEP team after six months of tracking. Additionally, variables include the victim's age, whether the perpetrator of domestic abuse was a romantic partner of the victim, the number of incidents reported to the police, the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) violence score, and the number of days until the first new incident of domestic abuse.

This project consists of secondary analysis material (syntax only, no data). The original study that the material pertains to is an examination of predominantly African American adolescents who live in extreme poverty. The study suggested that exposure to violence is positively related to involvement in the juvenile court system, and partially mediated by psychological factors, particularly hopelessness; thus, practitioners should take care to target more than just traumatic stress as a result of exposure to violence in African American impoverished youth.

This collection investigates the impact of increased activity of community intervention projects on the incidence of domestic abuse. In particular, the data provide an opportunity to evaluate the impact of police actions and court-ordered abuser treatment on the continued abuse of victims. The data file includes demographic information such as victim's age, race, and sex, and perpetrator's age, birthdate, relationship to the victim, sex, and physical or mental disabilities. Other variables describe the location and description of the incident, the number and gender of victims and perpetrators, and the outcome of the police intervention, i.e., arrest or nonarrest. Interviews with victims provided information regarding previous history of police intervention for domestic abuse, specific information about the violence suffered and resulting injuries, the frequency and type of abuse suffered in the six months prior to the violent incident in question, the type of police intervention used, and the victim's satisfaction with the responses of police. In addition, the 6- and 12-month interviews contain data regarding the change in the victim's relationship status since the last interview, satisfaction with the relationship, continued abuse and criminal justice involvement, use of support services by the victim or members of the victim's family, and satisfaction with these services.

This study sought to answer the question: If a woman is experiencing intimate partner violence, does the collective efficacy and community capacity of her neighborhood facilitate or erect barriers to her ability to escape violence, other things being equal? To address this question, longitudinal data on a sample of 210 abused women from the CHICAGO WOMEN'S HEALTH RISK STUDY, 1995-1998 (ICPSR 3002) were combined with community context data for each woman's residential neighborhood taken from the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) evaluation, LONGITUDINAL EVALUATION OF CHICAGO'S COMMUNITY POLICING PROGRAM, 1993-2000 (ICPSR 3335). The unit of analysis for the study is the individual abused woman (not the neighborhood). The study takes the point of view of a woman standing at a street address and looking around her. The characteristics of the small geographical area immediately surrounding her residential address form the community context for that woman. Researchers chose the police beat as the best definition of a woman's neighborhood, because it is the smallest Chicago area for which reliable and complete data are available. The characteristics of the woman's police beat then became the community context for each woman. The beat, district, and community area of the woman's address are present. Neighborhood-level variables include voter turnout percentage, organizational involvement, percentage of households on public aid, percentage of housing that was vacant, percentage of housing units owned, percentage of feminine poverty households, assault rate, and drug crime rate. Individual-level demographic variables include the race, ethnicity, age, marital status, income, and level of education of the woman and the abuser. Other individual-level variables include the Social Support Network (SSN) scale, language the interview was conducted in, Harass score, Power and Control score, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) diagnosis, other data pertaining to the respondent's emotional and physical health, and changes over the past year. Also included are details about the woman's household, such as whether she was homeless, the number of people living in the household and details about each person, the number of her children or other children in the household, details of any of her children not living in her household, and any changes in the household structure over the past year. Help-seeking in the past year includes whether the woman had sought medical care, had contacted the police, or had sought help from an agency or counselor, and whether she had an order of protection. Several variables reflect whether the woman left or tried to leave the relationship in the past year. Finally, the dataset includes summary variables about violent incidents in the past year (severity, recency, and frequency), and in the follow-up period.

This study used data from the first two waves of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to analyze the consequences of childhood exposure to intimate partner violence. The researcher for this study attempted to make four contributions: (1) provide theory driven research in the field of intimate partner violence, (2) do practical research, (3) strike a balance between the resolution of measurement problems and the examination of concrete outcomes, and (4) use high quality data and advanced statistical techniques to adjudicate between conflicting findings in existing literature. The nine data files used in this study were drawn from multiple imputed iterations using the Expectation-Maximization (E.M.) algorithm and data augmentation to address missing data. They included data from two waves of the PHDCN, with 4,955 records for each wave. The data included information for subjects aged 0 to 18 and covered the years 1994 to 2000. The researcher used various scales to measure domestic violence exposer, the impact of exposure on the child's cognitive functioning, the behavioral impact of exposure to domestic violence, anxiety, and the parent-child relationship. Data include the variables that the researcher used to study the effect of domestic violence exposure on not only externalizing, internalizing, and total behavior problems, and academic and cognitive ability, but also truancy, grade repetition, and drug use. This study also contains a selection of variables from several PHDCN studies including those pertaining to intimate partner violence, child abuse, juvenile delinquency, deviance of peers, alcohol use, primary caregiver involvement in the subject's life, and demographics.